<Begin Segment 13>

RP: Now, your asthmatic condition played a part in, in the --

YW: Yes, going to Rohwer.

RP: -- the camp you went to.

YW: Yeah.

RP: Can you explain?

YW: My dad, being concerned about my health, asked the person that was lining up these people to go to the different camps and he asked if there was a chance to change the location if possible. And he told him the reason, he said, "Well, you got a good reason." He says, "California's dry. That's Manzanar." He said, "That's where one group is going. We could send you to Arkansas if you want, and that's humid and wet. Don't know what to tell you, but those are the two choices." So I remember my mother and he talkin' about this and they said, "Let's take a chance with Arkansas," 'cause it wasn't much better here, so that's how we ended up in Arkansas. So three and a half days on a train and we ended up in Arkansas.

RP: What do you remember most about that trip?

YW: Tiring. Boring. Nothing to do, you know. You just sit in the rickety train. We didn't get Pullman accommodations. The people that got Pullman accommodations were the people that were in the hospitals, the patients. Those people got, they needed that, so they gave 'em the extra help. But the rest of us were sitting day and night like this on hard benches, three and a half days. Clickety clack, clickety clack, all day, all night. And one thing I do remember is every now and then we would have to pull over at a siding on a train track because a military train was going by us. In those days they still had soldiers running around the country in trains, and they had first priority, so we, we weren't in any hurry. They were, so they'd pull us off to the side and we'd wait half an hour for them to go by, put us back on the main track and continue our trip. So I remember that happening a couple of times. I do remember one time we stopped in Arizona in the daylight and lo and behold, these people were trying to sell us things. Vendors were trying to sell us things through the window.

RP: Like what? What kind of things?

YW: Oh, you know, candy, sandwiches, whatever. Nothing much, but I mean, they were selling. I said, what are they doing over there? This is a new thing for me. I've never seen this before. But I can see it. People are trying to vend their foods and goods. So I remember that.

RP: So this was your first time ever on a train?

YW: Yes, first for me.

RP: And it was your first time ever out of Los Angeles, too.

YW: Yes. Right. New experience. They said we were goin' to Arkansas. I knew nothing about the geography of this country at the time, and they said it's gonna take us three and a half days, and I said, I had no idea what three and a half days was gonna be like on the train. It was hardest on the parents. It was (...) agonizing, you know? Kids, we'd find, we'd wander around the train and meet up with other kids and go up and down the train and raise ruckus, and pretty soon the parents would say, "You got to calm it down, slow down. You're giving people headaches." But I do remember meals on the train. We'd go, you'd go to the train where they had the food, serving meals. And to this day I'm galled by the, by the fact that they expected us to tip those people.

RP: On the train?

YW: Hey, they're serving us. I understand that, but hey, they should be tipped by the government, not me. I thought that was kind of crude.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.