Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

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MH: So where did you end up? What relocation center did you go to?

GN: Our relocation and most Portlanders as well as most people from Seattle and most of the people from the Northwest, Yakima, Wapato, Tacoma, ended up in Minidoka, Idaho. Minidoka of course geographically fairly close to Twin Falls, Eden, Jerome, Idaho; Buhl, Idaho. It was kind of an experience of going. Again, repacking your bags and bags, you don't have a whole lot, being put on the train, and my experience was as a youngster kind of being bewildered, kind of knowing that you're going to go on this train. You're not accustomed to riding on trains, not something you do on a regular basis. Going on a train, we saw trains all the time at Union Station living in Northwest Portland going across the Steel Bridge, but we didn't ride on trains. Suddenly, this train is full of Japanese. And then there's these soldiers, to a youngster just a soldier kind of going up and down the aisle. Seemed like there was sort of a hush, sort of a resolve or a quietness or an unusual feeling as we left Union Station because no one told us how many hours we're going to be on the train. No one told us where we're going. And I think to the Isseis, it must have been frightening. I later thought about somebody growing up in Okayama, Japan, not knowing any place in America but Oregon and Washington, not knowing the geography of how huge America really is, not knowing that they might be going thousands of miles inland and being totally unaware. I don't think any of us can appreciate that tension and that stress. I don't think any of us can rightfully say we are placed in a plane or a train or a truck or a bus and told that we're going someplace that you are not going to be told where you are going to go. That's quite something. So there we are chugging away, and it was quite a long ride if I remember, but disembarking there in Idaho.

And finally, the word gets around and we're in Idaho and we're going to this place. A lot of the Isseis could hardly pronounce the word. They thought it was an Indian word called Minidoka. And so we went there riding a bus, and in our case, it's Block 34, and it's a lifestyle that suddenly even as a child, you recall, because when you go to the Portland Assembly Center in our case, our family became Number 15066. I don't think Mary and I will ever forget our family number of 15066. It was marked on our bag; it was marked on our tag; it was marked on our suitcase. Now we had another number. It's called 34-6-A, forty-four blocks in Minidoka each having ten barracks, twelve barracks, mess hall, laundry room. We were in barrack number six, A through F. If you have three or four children, you get compartment B or E. If you have two, you get A or F. So we ended up in 34-6-A. Again, a number that will stay with our family forever.

So here we get off at Twin Falls and are bussed to Minidoka, and we're there in Block 34. And as you look out, all you can see are rows and rows of barrack with tarpaper outside, black tarpaper. And beyond the barbwire fence, you see sagebrush forever, just rolls of hills of sagebrush. And off toward what seemingly was Block 35, you see a water tower which becomes kind of a landmark later on as we were able to go outside the premises of Minidoka Camp. But as we landed at Block 34, I was taken by the dust, ankle deep, in my case, came way above the ankles. I don't think anybody really knows what that is until you're in it. When you step and suddenly you can't see your shoes, your ankles, you're in dust. And of course, we all became accustomed to whirlwinds and dust storms, sagebrush, tick and scorpions and rattlesnakes, Jackrabbits and you name it. But the first days there, there was no drinking water, so I had to walk up to Block 36 to get drinking water and that became one of my early duties for the family. Yoshio, Mitsuo, you know, I'd have to go get my water, had a jug went up there and got water. And it was several days thereafter that water was tested, the piping plumbing, running water came into most of the mess halls and most of the laundry rooms. So our introduction to Minidoka was a barren place that they put up tarpaper barracks with these different size compartments therein, each one with a potbelly Franklin stove where you feed coal into it, with beds, with a door, walls aren't too particularly thick, wooden floors, rather sparse, but that was to be your home from this day forward. You don't know for how long.

And as one settled down into your, in our case Block 34, there were meetings called, and again suddenly, there was a block manager, Mr. Muramatsu of the Muramatsu family who lived in barrack four right behind us. And suddenly, there was a chief cook, and suddenly things were getting organized. We can't have people, older folks, plowing through the dust and sometimes the mud going to eat every day. We need to build walks. So all the teenagers, all the young people, even I went out there to try to help move rocks or boulders or gravel and try to build walkways in front of each barrack so that when you walk down your several stairs, you can get onto sort of an elevated walk and get to the bathroom or the laundry room or the mess hall safely without getting yourself totally in mud or immersed in dust. So as I observe life there in Minidoka, suddenly there were many things that started to emerge. Farmers that had farms around Hillsboro and Gresham, Milwaukie, Hood River started to really grow gardens. And so supplementing that food that were brought into camps by requirement, many of the Japanese and Japanese American farmers started to grow other things, some berries, some row crop, some fresh vegetables, some Japanese vegetables. How? I don't know. How they got the seeds, I don't know. But suddenly things started to get organized.