<Begin Segment 14>

KP: So how did you, can you describe the process of leaving, leaving the camp?

GM: It, we just had to crawl underneath the fence, and we knew that during the day you could see a road going up to, and then it kinda paralleled the creeks, and you could see boulders and kind of dirt, but the creeks were lined with sort of greenery and they looked like little shrubs from the camp. So in the middle of the night we start goin' toward, you know where the cemetery is? We went past the cemetery and finally we saw this road and we start going up the road, and then as it got lighter we came up to the creek, and what we thought were little bushes were tops of trees, more like sixty feet down, you know. We said, "No, no, we're not gonna go down there to fish. Forget it. But since we're here might as well climb this mountain, see what's on there, up there." So we start climbing up the mountain, and then a plane came over. It was kind of a private plane, not a military, but start flying around. I said maybe they spotted us, so we hid behind the boulders. And these boulders are huge. They're the size of houses, but from the camp they look small. And then we kept going up there and then the, the road turned. There was a road, dirt road that paralleled the foothill, so from there we decided to climb, leave the road and climb up, but after a while there was a place where, I don't know if you can see it on the... but there's a place where the two, two forks meet, and we came up to about that point, but some places there were no trail or anything.

KP: [Coughs] Excuse me.

GM: No trail. So as we started to climb all of a sudden the mountain disappeared. Couldn't see it anymore. And then the footing got bad. We hit shale, and you climb up a little bit and you slide back. You climb, then you slide. So some places you had to crawl, and by that time I had my fishing pole stuck on my back and it was a nuisance to me. No use because we couldn't fish 'cause the gorge was too steep. I don't know whether the other people, I read somewhere they had gone fishing and found some stream or something, but we never saw anything.

KP: Did you ever fish outside of camp?

GM: No. They were, they were very strict about that until after all the "no-nos" left, then people started to wander out.

KP: So how long did you climb Mount Williamson?

GM: It was just a couple hours, I guess. We, we got to a sheltered spot and we, everybody says, "Oh, we had enough." What are we gonna do? You come up, but you don't see anything. And the camp got smaller and smaller and pretty soon it was like this. It was a mile square, but you couldn't see. It was just a little block there. And then while we were still climbing there a jeep came up with two soldiers. We said, "Oh, they spotted us." They came up the road and they went down the southern branch and they went back to camp. We never saw 'em again. But we hid. They came within a couple feet from where we were hiding, but we didn't, we didn't...

KP: No problems getting back into camp?

GM: We waited until dark and then we snuck in, but after we came back we were tired, so Eddie Uno said, "Well, let's go to my place," and, since there was nobody there, we went there and we, we all sacked out for a couple hours. Then they said, "Let's get somethin' to eat," so we snuck back to the kitchen and he opened up, we had bowls of noodles and so we had some noodles. Then I went to my house and my mother and father were really worried. They said, "Where were you?" That kind of thing. I said, "Well, we were at the mountain. I told you that." But they had, they had forgotten. They thought something happened to us. I said, "What could happen?" They said they had the riot. That was the day of the riot. We didn't know about that. But I was kinda happy because Eddie Uno was a Kibei and most of the leaders of the mess hall were Kibeis, and one of 'em, he had started a union. I wasn't interested in any union, so I never joined.

KP: Do you remember signing, in some of the camps they had a, like a WRA work corps oath that you had to sign before you could work. Did you sign anything before you went to work?

GM: No. Oh, the, the only oath that they had was for the camouflage nets. Here we were in camp because we're supposedly all disloyal, otherwise they wouldn't have put us in the camp, but you had to be a citizen to work on the... kinda dumb. But I think that might've been the oath, because I never had... where's that piece of paper I gave you?

KP: The other question I have is when, it sounds like you were really aware of what was building up to Pearl Harbor at that time.

GM: I was, but the average people wasn't.

KP: Yeah, but in the camp, did you, did you know that there were any tensions that would lead to the riot at all, or were you paying attention to that?

GM: There was talk that they, the JACL, they're the ones that told us all be calm, take everything in stride, it's just something that can't be helped, all that kind of thing, so instead of them speaking up for the community, say hey, this is illegal, it's unconstitutional, they recommend that we go over quietly. So most of the people did that, like sheep. So I couldn't understand that. Nobody said any words, they just... except there were three guys that resisted, and I wrote about them, too. Not in the Manzanar one, but in the Tule Lake one.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.