<Begin Segment 18>

RP: You were fortunate that you could go out of camp and take an occasional visit to Delta. And what was your feeling on leaving camp that first time to go into Delta? How did you feel?

TH: I had gone out on little shopping trips to Delta. And then a few months after that, I saved up all of my money and went to Salt Lake City for a shopping spree. And I had friends living in Salt Lake City so they put me up for the night. But we were able to go shopping in Salt Lake City. This was towards the beginning of 1944. So we had a little bit more freedom then.

RP: Did you feel any apprehension on your first trip to Delta?

TH: No, I didn't. I did not feel any apprehension. The town was, I think we put Delta on the map. It was the second biggest town in Utah at that time, Topaz was. Delta was just a, really a one-horse rural town.

RP: And you shopped there?

TH: Well, shopped there, just simple groceries. But my biggest shopping spree was in Salt Lake City when I went to the department store called ZCMI and bought a coat.

RP: You bought some five-dollar shoes, too.

TH: Yes. We were wearing five-dollar shoes then, but we dressed alike because, of course, we bought clothes through the Sears-Roebuck catalog. That was our main source of outside wear clothing.

RP: At Manzanar, they gave people these peacoats and army, old khaki World War I uniforms. Did you see any of that in Topaz?

TH: Yes, we received World War I surplus mackinaws and navy peacoats, and so we all dressed alike. And the men even had leggings, so they wrapped these woolen, I guess, strips around their legs, and keep them warm and keep the snakes out and scorpions out.

RP: You said it was a very open place, but also very bleak, too. How are the, how did you adjust to the, coming from the Bay Area, a lot of vegetation, milder climate, and then you're in Topaz with the extremes of summer and winter.

TH: Well, it was bleak. It was cold, it was dusty, it was hot, it was everything we in the Bay Area did not experience before. But, you know, the desert sunsets are beautiful, and we saw a lot of that. And I think we had a white Christmas once, so that was new and it was fun. And the pond froze over and so the people who had ice skates were out there ice skating. So there were some new experiences.

RP: Were you one of those?

TH: No. I couldn't skate.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.