<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Okay, so describe... can you remember the journey from Portland to Minidoka, how that was done?

KO: Not really too much other than getting on a train one afternoon and riding with the shades closed. I don't remember whether we were fed, even. I know somebody else from another... well, from the Puyallup camp talking about going to the dining room and eating, but I don't remember a train like that for us. I do remember taking a peek from under the shades. We couldn't raise the shades, but I took a peek one morning. It was early in the morning, and being a railroad person, I used to... when I used to ride the train as a boy, used to always look out the window and would know one station after the other. On this ride, I happened to lift the shade and I recognized that, "Hey, we're in Huntington." And then put the shade down and rode to Minidoka.

TI: So it seemed like you were kind of pleased that because of your experience, you could look and know right away where you were, and so in your mind you could even know, okay, so this is where we are, and we're probably going here, and this is how we're going, all those different things. So then, but eventually you got to that Hunt or that Minidoka area. And what was that like for you?

KO: Well, I'm not exactly sure, but I think the train track took us off the main line to a siding at Eden. I think that's where it was. And getting off the train, you were saying, "There's nothing here." And there wasn't anything there, just miles and miles of sagebrush. There was no station at Eden.

TI: So it was just like a, yeah, just a platform where you just get off.

KO: I don't even remember whether there was a platform.

TI: Or just getting off onto the ground. But then you're eventually taken to the camp, and what were your first impressions when you saw Minidoka?

KO: Well, whoever organized this whole thing did a real good job of getting people off the train, onto buses, and to this community of black tarpaper barracks, and knew exactly where to go. That really surprised me.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.