<Begin Segment 4>

JA: Tell me how you were transported to Manzanar.

FK: We were told to gather in front of the Buddhist Temple on First and Alameda at such-and-such a time, and we were there with our two suitcases apiece, and our family was grouped together in one little knot, and other families were gathered similarly all along the curb. And we were taken to the Union Station and we had to walk a long distance in the place, way into the, into the track area, and we boarded an old train that had the curtains drawn, and we went to Manzanar that way. Well, I don't know where exactly that spur ended, but we got off that train finally and were taken by truck to Manzanar, and we arrived late in the afternoon.

JA: Were there guards on the train?

FK: Yes. Not a lot of 'em, but there were guards, yeah. I still remember the lunches they served, they must've been made a couple of days ago. I'm a young kid, you know, then, food was an important thing to me, and I still remember horrible. In fact, if I have anything to say about camp, a lot of it goes back to the food because before that, I guess I'd have to say I ate pretty good, especially like if you have a grocery store. And we ate a lot of meat because it's the easiest thing to prepare and a lot of times we'd prepare -- as young as I was, I'd fry my own hamburger or whatever or steak and eat it in the back of the store 'cause it's the easiest thing to do. Once you get to camp, though, wow, meat was an item you hardly ever saw. You know, it would be meat that would be diced up real small, or meat would be bologna, or once in a great while we got chicken, and once even more in a great while we'd have meat, but it was always mutton. Mutton is something I learned to dislike because I didn't like the aroma. For years, I couldn't eat lamb chops.

JA: Say that again?

FK: For a long time I couldn't eat lamb chops because it's similar to, that smell is the same as mutton.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.