<Begin Segment 22>

RP: Kirk, do you have any additional questions?

KP: Actually I do. From Santa Anita to Jerome, how did you get there?

OM: It was a train.

KP: Had you ever been on a train before?

OM: Well, other than a electric car, you know, one of these red cars that go from Long Beach to LA, no. That was the first train ride that I was on.

KP: What was that like for you?

OM: Well, I think like she had described it before, there was MPs on the car and the shades were drawn but we weren't like her, I mean, we were peeking all the time, you know, particularly at night time, you know. There's no lights in the car anyway so you pull the shades up and the lights outside, you know, is coming in. So besides, the MPs didn't say anything but we were travelling most of the time at night time, you know. During the war time, freight cars had priority over passengers and oftentimes we were just sitting there while waiting for another freight car to go by. But you're out in a... some small little hick town, nothing to see so I don't think it was a kind of exciting ride that... looking at the scenes, you know. As I recall, what scenes I did see were, we're always in the back side of some town, you know. And I think that's true, most of the railroads run, not in the fancy part of town, it's always on the backside of town and that's what I remember seeing.

KP: Did you ever stop and have a chance to get off the train and just walk around?

OM: No, I don't think we ever did that. It took two or three days to get to Arkansas. In fact, you know, when we went back there, that railroad track still run there. It's running right outside of camp and I would imagine it's the same one, railroad tracks.

KP: It's the same railroad tracks up at Tule Lake?

OM: Well, yeah, we went there by train too, Tule Lake. But that... yeah, I think that was the same kind of ride, you know, shades down. In fact, that was I think more guarded because of the character of the people on the train. [Laughs] But most of those train rides... I don't know what the secrecy is about, you go through the backside of the towns, there's nothing secret there I don't think. Other than how shabby most of these towns are, you know, if there's any scenery, I don't recall any grand vistas or anything like that.

Off camera: Wasn't the point being to not show us being railroaded down someplace?

OM: No, but you know, I read someplace where when people went from Santa Anita to Heart Mountain, they had a stop in Salt Lake City. And Salt Lake City, the Japanese American community was not uprooted, they didn't have to go to camp. And they were waiting at the station and gave them nigiri and things like that. So, I thought, wow, that's fantastic. How did they know that they we're going to be there if it was a secret train? But when the train stopped in Salt Lake City, they gave them all these rice balls and whatnot. So, I don't think it's that much of a secret.

Well, you know, like your cousin was saying the other day, in Santa Anita before other people, we were already in camp, April 3rd or whatever, they didn't go until May something. And they used to go visit, can you imagine that? They were still on the outside, and they used to come to the camp, through the fence or whatever, and meet their friends there. I could see some Caucasian friends coming and meeting you, but Japanese friends coming to see you. One is on the outside and one on the inside. That's kind of ridiculous but that's... she says that happened.

Off Camera: My cousin's wife said Sunday that, see she lived in Riverside also, and her sister heard that the people who moved to East L.A. get to go to Manzanar, which was supposed to be a good camp. So they moved from Riverside to East L.A., near Boyle and Third Street or something like that in Boyle Heights in order to sign up for Manzanar.

OM: See, somewhere this information was out there and people were smart enough to ferret that information out.

Off camera: If you live in L.A., to be able to go to Manzanar. And I don't know if my mother knew that because we moved from Gardena Japantown. Like I said, I don't know if that's why. All I know is that I don't know if anyone else did. But that was in Little Tokyo.

RP: If you had stayed in Gardena, where would have gone?

Off Camera: Santa Anita. I'm not going to Jerome like him. [Laughs]

OM: See that's where a lot of us, like my dad was... you talk about us being naive, my dad was really, I don't recall him ever reading a newspaper, you know, later on he did, after the war. But we didn't take any news... American papers, we didn't take any Japanese papers.

RP: You didn't have a radio.

OM: No radio, you know, so we're kind of in a vacuum here and asked him what camp? I don't know we'll go where they tell us to meet there, we'll go there, they'll tell us where to go and that's where we went. But a lot of people were using their heads. I know in Fresno, they said, 99 was the dividing line, if you lived east of that, you went someplace, if you were west of that, you went someplace else. I think west went to Arkansas, Jerome. Because there were a lot of Fresno people, Hanford, Parlier and those people all went there. Certain towns like Florin, they went to Jerome. You'd be surprised... in a way, you're talking about I met a lot of people. These people I still... some of them I still meet, I know. I meet 'em... I met someone at work and occasionally, you know, just enough to say hello, still talk to them. But it's been, what, fifty, sixty years, more than sixty years.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.