Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

<Begin Segment 11>

MH: Now where did you go? Most people in Portland went to the Portland Assembly Center and how did you get there?

GN: The majority, the predominance of Portland people of course went to the Portland Livestock, renamed the Portland Assembly Center. That was a place of course that they marshaled up most of the people in Multnomah and surrounding counties as sort of a temporary home. Yes, we did go there, but I think one of the stressful periods was leading up to that time. History of course will record Executive Order 9066, which was very recently, by the way, stricken off the records and General John DeWitt's order and the curfew, all of those things are recorded in the annals of history. But from a family point of view, in our case, my older sister and brother are in Japan and how are we going to unite our family again was obviously a major concern to my parents. When you're six or seven or eight years old, you're concerned that your siblings, brother, sister are far away, but you do not understand the hazards and consequences of a war. Certainly, they had, deep, serious concerns. And then came the order that we're going to have to, if you will evacuate and leave to the Portland Assembly Center. And in our case, having had four children with the hotel business, with the fruit and vegetable stand business, to get rid of those businesses, to get rid of your possessions, to close bank accounts, and all the other things and the myriad of responsibilities that one has to do in a matter of days, must have been an awesome task facing my parents. And when you think of only the bag and baggage you can carry.

I remember years later when we had the Day of Remembrance out at the Portland Exposition Center, our family had a number was the theme. I remember taking my daughter Deena there and telling her that, "You know, Dad and his jiichan and baachan had to pack only what they could carry. Tell me Deena, could you pack everything you want into a bag if someone told you that you're going to go somewhere and you're never going to come back to this house again?" Oh, no, never. Well, Jiichan and Baachan had to do that. Not only that there were many rules, you can't bring knives, you can't bring radios, you can't bring cameras, you can't bring a lot of things, but do indeed bring warm clothing, bring rubber boots, bring mittens. So Jiichan and Baachan, my parents, Kane and Shigeo Nakata, had to not only get rid of that console radio to the policeman on the beat, but their phonograph player and their camera and all the other things that they had, and they're hoping that Adam can take some of the things and put it away for us. We had Japanese culture in terms of the festival, the Boys' Day and the Girls' Day, now of course combined as Children's Day in Japan. But during those years, it was Japan, it was Girls' Day, hinamatsuri or it was Boys' Day, you learn about all the various dolls, and my mother had all the dolls that she would put up on Girls' Day. And on Boys' Day, she'd put up all the boys dolls. We had those kinds of prized possessions. What do you do with those? You couldn't take them. And so we only took what we could take, and a lot of those somehow got lost in the shuffle, and only a few scattering of things did we ever get back when we came back after the war ended. So the few days, the few weeks leading up to the actual movement to the Portland Assembly Center may not have been long, it may have been from December till March or April or May, and different families went on different days of course, but packing a large suitcase, packing this big duffle bag, moving and getting on a bus, going out to the Portland Assembly Center, was quite an experience even for a youngster.