Densho Digital Archive - Carol Hirabara Hironaka Interview (denshovh-hcarol-01-0016)

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RP: So tell me who was with you at Manzanar. Your parents?

CH: Yeah, my parents, my father and my mother, and my sister and my brother. And I, the two uncle family, Uncle George and Uncle Harry, their family, they had one, one child each.

RP: Now, had they joined you in Florin so you could all go together?

CH: Yes. See, my Uncle Harry came from San Francisco, so they came and stayed in the bungalow that we had. And my Uncle George, I don't know where they were, but they came, and we all went together, more or less.

RP: And how did the living arrangements work out in the barracks there? Who was where?

CH: Well, our family and my grandparents, we were in one room. But Uncle George and Uncle Harry's family, they lived in another, next adjoining, next room.

RP: So you had your grandparents, your parents, and...

CH: Yeah, seven of us.

RP: Is that the way it stayed through the whole time at Manzanar, or did you, did the kids get their own space?

CH: No. As soon as Uncle George, I think he went to Chicago, his family went to Chicago. And Uncle Harry and his family went to Amache, Colorado. So there was space in that apartment, so we called them Ojiisan and Obaasan, went to that apartment.

RP: Oh, your grandparents moved into the next room?

CH: Yeah.

RP: You said that your Uncle Harry went to Amache?

CH: Yes. Because Aunt Josie, his wife's family lived in, were in Amache, Colorado. Lot of people did that, where their family had...

RP: So they wanted to reunite themselves, okay. And how, how soon after getting to camp did your uncles leave camp? Was it a year, was it two years? Do you have just kind of a vague memory of when they left?

CH: It would have been about 1944, and went to Chicago. I guess they started opening up the Midwest or whatever they call that, I don't know. And then I think my brother went to New Jersey to enroll in a, in those days, radio school, I don't know what, repair radios and everything. And my... my sister left in 1945 to Los Angeles, became a housekeeper at a then doctor's office, I think, doctor's home.