Densho Digital Archive - Shigeki Sugiyama Interview (denshovh-sshigeki-01-0005)

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RP: Just to backtrack a little bit, do you recall December 7, 1941?

SS: Pardon?

RP: Do you recall December 7, 1941?

SS: Oh, yes, I recall because it was on Sunday, and for some reason we didn't have church service that day, we were having basketball practice at the Alameda (High School) gym. When we got the news while we were right... I think we were in the shower when we got the word that Pearl Harbor had been attacked by the Japanese, that attack. But of course, that shut down both the temple and the Japanese language school. Our minister, Reverend Motoyoshi, was among the first to be rounded up by the FBI. And as I recall, I don't recall exactly who was picked up other than Reverend Motoyoshi, but all of the prominent leaders of the Japanese community... one of our family friends was picked up by the FBI, and I think the reason was that he was the treasurer of the Japanese language school and I think, kiddingly, he accused my father, and he says, well, my father had been the treasurer previously. [Laughs] So, you know, it was that bantering back and forth, you know, you're the one that should have gone to internment camp.

Alameda and I think Bainbridge and Terminal Island are the three that I know of but... and so I refer to the Alameda evacuation as the "Alameda Diaspora" because the... several years ago we had a, our second reunion of old timers and there were I think about fifty families that came to that. And I did a survey and asked, "Where did you go from Alameda, and then to what camp?" and it turned out that when I tabulated, Alamedans had wound up in all ten camps. So they were dispersed quite a bit. And some went to one camp and then wound up in Tule Lake and so they were in two camps. We went from Manzanar to Topaz, and that was at my father's request (since) my grandmother was in Topaz. That's an interesting side light too. It was in November 1943, at Manzanar they loaded us up into a station wagon, drove us all the way to Reno and then gave us tickets to Delta, Utah. And so from Reno to Delta, Utah, we were on our own. So when we got to Ogden, we had to change trains to go down to Delta and we got there, you know, late at night. But the train to Delta wasn't until the morning, like six or seven so we had to sit in the train station there for all night. I recall my father and myself and I think one of my brothers went to a movie, and then caught the train to Delta and when we got down to Delta, there's another station wagon or van there, driven by a Nisei Japanese, and he picked us up and took us to Topaz. So, you know, it was sort of a casual thing, you know, we could've kept on going if we had place to go to. [Laughs]

RP: Just to go back to the Alameda removal, do you recall how much time you had?

SS: I think it was two to three weeks. I guess the Executive Order was the 19th so we had to be out of... I think it was less than two weeks is what it amounted to because we had to be out by the end of February.

RP: And that order applied to Germans, Italians and Japanese?

SS: Well, (yes)... just the city of Alameda. So some people moved into Oakland, San Leandro, down into what is now Fremont. And they're the ones that wound up in Topaz, others, there's some, a few of the citizen Nisei who stayed in Alameda until they were relocated into assembly camps and so forth. My father had a friend in French Camp and so arranged, then found a place, a vacant farmhouse out there and so we moved to French Camp, well, actually, officially Lathrop, but within the French Camp area. and then when it came to go into camp, the people around us, I think, went into the Stockton Assembly Center and there's one strip that was left, and I thought, oh, maybe they forgot us, you know. And then we got orders to go to Manzanar. And Manzanar was called a "reception center" at that time.