<Begin Segment 6>

MR: And then shortly after that, you're in high school and Pearl Harbor happens.

MY: Yes.

MR: What was what was going through your mind at that time?

MY: Well, of course, we were very much worried. We didn't know what the future was going to be like. My mother was frightened, and there were all kinds of rumors flying around that the Japanese would all have to leave and be put into camps. And it all turned out to be true, but it was hard for her, and she would rely on her friends' counsel quite a bit.

MR: How many of your family were together? Was everyone still at home at that time?

MY: Yes. There were just the three of us siblings and my mother, and we were always together.

MR: What assembly center did you go to?

MY: We went to Santa Anita. We lived in Los Angeles at that time, and we were one of the last groups to evacuate. What happened was the earlier groups went to Manzanar. And then as soon as they left town, their living area was off limits to all the other Japanese. So gradually, our area for traveling became smaller and smaller because we were one of the last to leave. But we went to Santa Anita which was fairly close to Los Angeles, and we met downtown, boarded buses, and left.

MR: For Santa Anita?

MY: Yes.

MR: What's your recollection of Santa Anita?

MY: Well, first of all, it was very kind of exciting because we'd never seen so many Japanese before in our lives, and here we were all thrown together, you know, and we were teenagers, and you know how young kids are. You want to look around and see who else was there. So for the first few weeks, it was very exciting just to kind of get our feel around camp. But, the older people realized that this was not good, that the young people should have school or have something to keep themselves occupied, so a bunch of volunteers got together, and they started a school in the grandstand at Santa Anita. I went to school, and my chemistry teacher was the local undertaker's son who had a lot of courses in chemistry, and my art teacher was a man who had a job at Disney Studios, and it was like that. We took classes, and the person who taught was someone who was employed in that field, and it was not only fun, but it kept us busy and out of trouble.

MR: When you left, you could only take what you could carry. What did you decide was important to bring?

MY: Well, there again, we heard a lot of rumors, and I know someone said, well, you better bring boots because you're going to be in, either in the desert or in the snow country. So one of our first trips was to go out to the shoe store and to buy boots, knee high boots. And of course, we didn't wear things like that in Los Angeles, but we went to camp with our boots. We were also required to take our own cooking utensils, not cooking not cooking utensils but eating utensils, our own bedding and clothes, but our limit was just that which we could carry, but we had quite a big bundle of things to take. And there were just four of us women in our family, but we had help from other people who either lived in our hotel or lived nearby.

MR: As a teenage girl, what did, was there something that you took along that maybe wasn't on the list that you just couldn't live without?

MY: I can't think of anything. Let's see. No. And of course, we didn't have things like material things like the kids do have nowadays, but I can't think of anything special.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.