<Begin Segment 17>

KP: When your family was ready to leave Tule Lake, did you have a choice of which camp you'd go to?

TT: Yeah.

KP: Did you, okay. And you chose...

TT: We had a good friend of ours... see, my dad was a railway express agent, so he had us stay. So when my dad and a good friend of ours from Sacramento, we'd go with them, so he'd wanted to look after us, guardian-like, look after us. We went to Topaz.

KP: So your dad stayed in...

TT: My dad had to stay, one of the last ones, one of the last few to leave Tule Lake after the segregation, because he was a railroad express agent.

KP: So once again you're back on a train?

TT: Yeah.

KP: How was that?

TT: That was just as bad as the first one. [Laughs] I still remember the middle of Utah, they let us off near Salt Lake, I still remember that, it was at a stockyard. You know, you could just see the fence and all that, but they let us off over by the stockyard to stretch our legs, I remember. Just before we crossed the Salt Lake, I remember that. Then we landed up in Topaz, seventeen miles outside of Delta, Utah.

KP: How did that compare?

TT: Well, that's middle of nowhere, the sagebrush, but all the camps had in common, it's hot in summer, cold in winter, they all had dust storm. But like I say, lot of times you didn't need the dustpan because you just swept across the board and dust would go down there. Because don't forget, it's made of green lumber, and it'd go through the cracks.

KP: So did you get up to your mischievous ways in Topaz again, or where you... did you get in trouble there? Did you harass the MPs?

TT: No.

KP: Or were you a little older?

TT: No, we had things to do. We made a good friend with that, couple of Bay Area families, so we didn't get in too much trouble. But see, they were more or less very lenient because you're in the middle of nowhere, you're in the sagebrush country, you can't go anywhere, it's the middle of the, like a desert place. So they had a low barbed wire fence, we used to go over there, there used to be a canal way back there. We used to go fishing over there. Once in a while, it was a long walk, we used go out there and go fishing and come back. But the main gate, well, they had guard towers there, but they were more or less a lot more lenient than in Tule Lake. So we used to go over the fence, and we used to go fishing in the canal out there. We used to use a, made hooks out of that stick pin. [Laughs]

KP: So any other way that Topaz was different from Tule Lake?

TT: Well, they were a lot more lenient, I'll put out. See, because like Topaz was, like I say, seventeen mile outside of the little town of Delta, the railhead there. Supposed to be a small town. So all our supplies used to come in on the train, you had to send a truck to get 'em and bring into camp. So then the same token again, we had our own cattle ranch, we had our own, few, like our own farm there, so Tule Lake was set up sometimes that we would send, between the camps, they used to send different vegetable, you know. So like in Topaz, Utah, we used to raise cattle, and we used to take it to the slaughter house in Fillmore, Utah. They had a slaughterhouse there. So we used to get, I used to bum a ride on that and just go one day trip, go ride on the truck, go to the slaughterhouse out there at Fillmore, Utah.

KP: Just to get out of camp?

TT: Oh, yeah. That boss, he had to sign for a number of guys. They were a lot more lenient than in Tule Lake.

KP: So your dad joined you in Topaz, finally?

TT: Oh, yeah, he did. He worked as a plumber over there. Because that camp was still set up, they were laying that sewer line, the water line, and all that. See, that wasn't complete. So I forget what he did after they got that, all the water line and everything, I don't know what the heck he did. He might have ended up in that auto shop or structure, I don't know, I don't remember.

KP: Didn't paint any seagulls?

TT: No, they had a lot of seagulls there, but we didn't fool around with seagulls no more. Utah they had a lot of seagulls.

KP: Did you kind of avoid school again, too?

TT: No. Pretty much by that time, I was draft age, so I got drafted. I didn't stay too long in Topaz.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.