<Begin Segment 27>

RP: After, after that experience... you shared with us yesterday that you started to have a desire to be free, to get out of Manzanar.

IK: Yes, I, I don't know when that desire started, but it was, it grew very, very strong. I just had to get out of there, and I don't know quite why, but I knew I wanted to. That, it was just, this place was going nowhere.

RP: And how did you go ahead and realize that desire to leave camp?

IK: Well, it had to be the word running around, 'cause that's news, or maybe it was my parents, my mother... but anyway, it's, in fact, I don't exactly know who changed my mind to apply for a job anywhere. And I don't know who mentioned even the YMCA would hire me. And so I wrote to my old boss in Los Angeles, and I assumed, I never heard one way or the other, that he did write a, one letter to the YMCA, but I, anyway, I think they offered me a job, and that's how I got out. I wasn't smart enough to go there and take the job. That was pretty dumb.

RP: Can you, how did your parents feel about you leaving camp?

IK: They never said anything about yes or no to me, 'cause I'm a grown man now, supposedly. So no, they didn't express anything about that.

RP: So you made a decision to leave, and do you recall anything about your trip out of camp, first to Reno?

IK: Boy, that was, that was quite an occasion, going away from camp with about, oh, four or five of us, and one girl. And she sat by me in the bus, and she's waving at her friends and suddenly she starts crying. I thought, "Oh, God, what are you doing?" And she's crying that she's leaving her friends and dancing and all that stuff, and I sat on the trip to Chicago all the way, and god, it was quite worrying. She cried all the way about her boyfriends and whatever, parents, 'til bus to Reno, then we transferred to train, and she cried all the way. Pretty soon she's gettin' to me. I'm wondering, "Why am I leaving?" But we went to the same receiving place in Chicago, the, it was a fraternity of a college, religious college. I can't remember their name. But there we parted ways, thank goodness, 'cause she was, she was so homesick from the second we got on the bus. So that was quite a, that was hardest trip I ever took.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.