<Begin Segment 7>

AL: When did you first learn that you were gonna be moved off the island and how did you learn?

SK: March. We were told in March that we were to leave in two weeks. We were, and I know we left on March 30th... no, March 29th, I think it was. Yeah, March 29th, because we got to Manzanar April 1st, April Fool's Day.

AL: And you went across on a ferry, right?

SK: They... they had some nice, I got to ride in a jeep. The army trucks were there. They went around the island and they picked everybody up, and they had trucks and jeeps. And of course I got to ride in the jeep and I got to sit right next to the soldier driving the jeep. And I was, I thought, "Well, that's really interesting." I mean I thought that was a great thing, 'cause I never rode in a jeep before.

AL: What do you remember about the soldiers? Do you remember any person or...

SK: I don't... the only thing I remember was they were very, very nice. And they were just as confused about what in the dickens was going on because they were just told to come pick us up, take us to Seattle, put us on the train, in fact, and I think they went down with us. And they really didn't know too much about exactly where we were going. And so they made -- from what I was told, they made friends with the people on, with us on the train. And they were very, very nice, you know, and they were young fellows, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen year olds. And so they had, everybody had a good time on the train. Well, then we got down to, we got down to California... I forgot where that was. Anyway, we got off the train and then we were loaded onto buses and taken to Manzanar. And of course everybody says, "Oh, this is interesting." You know, we didn't know where we were going. Well, we got down there and we saw this barren desert. It was strictly desert. We were, it was the first, Manzanar was just being built. And they... and I think it took them two weeks just to put up the buildings and do some tarpapering. And we, and so we had, we had wooden floors with spaces in between like this where the dust would come up and then we had those awful windstorms. And the house was just covered with dust.

AL: What was your apartment and barrack number?

SK: We were in Block 3. We were the first group to be there other than the workers. It was Block 3, Building 4, Apartment 3.

AL: And how many people in your apartment?

SK: There were... let's see. There were, yeah, seven of us. Let's see, there was five kids, six of us, and then my Dad, my dad was in Montana.

AL: When did your dad rejoin the family?

SK: He joined us on June 27th of forty... let's see, when did we go to Manzanar? 1942. It was my sister's birthday, that's why I remember.

AL: So he joined you three months after you got there, about?

SK: Yeah.

AL: Okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.