<Begin Segment 15>

RP: Where did you leave to go to Manzanar?

CH: Where did I what?

RP: Where did you leave for your trip to Manzanar? Where did you have to go?

CH: Oh, we went to Elk Grove. Mr. Davies on his truck loaded us up with our duffel bags full of stuff. Yeah, took a train with the shades drawn, and we went down to Mojave. And then we went up to Lone Pine, and then we got on a bus, transported us to Manzanar.

RP: Do you remember anything else about that trip?

CH: Oh, we got box lunch for lunch, and was it dinner or was it... the same thing, you know. That's about all I can remember. And of course we saw some friends. Didn't expect them to, to see them. That was kind of a happy moment, to find somebody that you know, classmate, especially.

RP: Who was that, do you remember?

CH: His name was Kenji Morita, and he lives in Lodi, I think, right now. And let's see, who else? Oh, my good friend was living in Los Angeles. At the time, I didn't know her too well, Peggy Kawaguchi. Her name was Peggy Ito Kawaguchi. She was on this trip. So I had new friends, too.

RP: When you arrived at Manzanar, what struck you the most about what you saw there?

CH: Well, first of all, I thought, "Gee, I've never seen so many Japanese." [Laughs] And then, of course, the barracks kind of, kind of depressed me a little bit, 'cause it was very crude-looking. But I guess that's what the soldiers were stationed in, weren't they?

RP: Yes, they were.

CH: So this, I didn't think we were prisoners, but we felt like we were prisoners when we got there.

RP: And you were an American citizen.

CH: I know. The government does crazy things, I guess, in time of war, and other times, too.

RP: Just to backtrack a little bit, were you in your junior or senior year at Elk Grove?

CH: I was a senior, supposed to graduate the next day or the day, that day, and we didn't have it. We just had to go. We couldn't extend it or anything.

RP: The next day was your graduation?

CH: Yeah. So all we did was, somehow, we got our cap and gown, and we took pictures of our, all of us.

RP: Before you left?

CH: Yeah. I don't know how it happened, but we did do that. Then, of course, we exchanged the pictures. But it was not a group picture, of course.

RP: That's a sad moment, to spend four years in high school and look for that, that final...

CH: Yeah. It's pretty sad. You figured who would be going to Manzanar and who would be going somewhere else. A lot of them were going to the Fresno Assembly Center, quite a few of them, I think. And they were the ones that went to Jerome, Arkansas, and of course some were in Tule Lake, I think, after that.

RP: So the Florin community was really dispersed.

CH: Yes.

RP: And so was the Elk Grove High School senior class. You were assigned to what block in Manzanar?

CH: (30-2). Everything was built by then, except maybe, maybe the mess hall was not completed, so we had to go to the next block to have our meals.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.