<Begin Segment 7>

RP: To go back to Camp Florence, what specific training did you receive as an MP there?

RD: Well, I don't think we were there that long. And that's all I did was take basic training there for about three or four weeks, however long we were there, learning to shoot different rifles and stuff and crawling through the, whatever they call it, they had barbed wire and stuff and you had to crawl underneath it and they had overhead fire there. Practice throwing hand grenades and stuff like that, learning to march.

RP: Any other stories you can share with us about your time there?

RD: In Florence?

RP: Yeah.

RD: No, not too much. We used to take off...

RP: Get around the desert at all?

RD: Get around the different towns in there and have a few drinks and come back. There wasn't too much to do around there. It was just like a bunch of us get together and go to town and drink, and that was about all there was to do, and come back home. I don't remember too much about Florence at all. Like I said, there wasn't very much going on there.

RP: And then you were given orders to go to Manzanar. And did your, did the officers or anybody explain to you what the situation was like and who you would be guarding?

RD: No. Actually, we were the MPEG, which was the Military Police Escort Guard, like you work on trains and stuff like that, but we never did any of that. And then we, of course, whatever outfit that was there, they transferred them out of there and we took over for them.

RP: How did you travel up to the camp?

RD: Pardon?

RP: How did you travel to the camp?

RD: Well, I think we... I'm not too sure. I remember we came from Florence, I think we came by train to a certain place, I don't remember where, and then we traveled by truck up to someplace in California, I don't remember that much about it.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2009 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.