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LT: Now when were you born and where were you born?

TT: I was born April 18, 1942, at the Emanuel Hospital in Portland. And at the time of the assembly center, like I said, we were gaily laying there in the hospital, and then went straight there to the assembly center. Which must have been a shock if I would have known anything, you know. I understand it's pretty ugly. But I have no memories, obviously, of those early times.

LT: So your father and your sister Sylvia --

TT: Yeah, Sylvia was three.

LT: -- and your grandparents.

TT: My grandparents were from Seattle, so they weren't with us. They were actually put in a different place. But they sent my aunt Mae, my poor aunt Mae Miyake down, and then on my dad's side, our aunt Reiko Takeuchi who then was, became and Okawa, the two of them came and were kind of there to help us.

LT: Okay. So at eleven a.m. on May 5, 1942, Mrs. Goodman, a family friend, took your family, including your mom, who was carrying you as a newborn, to the Portland Assembly Center, and you were designated to live in Section 2, C-14. What have your parents told you about what it looked like, what it sounded like, what it smelled like at the Portland Assembly Center?

TT: My father doesn't talk a lot of it. I think he's not quite, wasn't quite into the interior decorating or anything like that. He was running around talking to all of his friends, I'm sure. But Mom talks about the assault of the smells and the filth, and the fact that all these people are jammed, the depression, she said, the feeling, Oregon's dreary enough, but the depression you could just feel. And when you got there, I mean, they had just taken those boards, thrown them over the, all of the animal matter that was there. So the smells were horrid and it was filthy. I mean, they just put up boards. It wasn't like we had any kind of walls with plaster or anything like that.

LT: You talk about the animal matter. What animal matter?

TT: It actually had been, several of them had been stalls for animals, so horses, cows, I don't know, whatever they had. It was a slaughterhouse, I believe, so there were probably cows and pigs. And then they didn't, like, take and put down cement or concrete and put drains in, they just built these barracks over the top. And so then the one story I do hear of is when it got so hot, and someone put water on the top of the roof to cool everything down, the water went down and soaked that matter, even though it had been a long time since it'd been there, because we'd been living there, and the smells just came up like gaseous forms, and it was terrible. But for someone who comes from living in a home and all this, for those of who don't camp and don't want to be laying around in the dirt or walking around in soil, it was tough. Mom was a good hiker and everything, but she definitely didn't want to live there, and it was, there was dust and dirt everywhere.

LT: Now, your mom was still in pain because she'd just given birth to you, so she was trying to recuperate. She had you as a newborn baby. What was it like for her and for you in this new home that smelled, that was noisy, that was not a safe, sterile place to raise a newborn?

TT: Luckily I have no recollection. But to top everything off, I was allergic to milk and my mother wasn't able to breastfeed. So Mom and I spent a lot of time not in the barracks but in the latrines, because those rooms were big and there was a place you could sit, because I was wailing all the time. I was crying and not very happy. So for her, it had to be beyond anything imaginable. She couldn't get any rest, like you said, she'd just had a baby, and everything was filthy, and she's a very tidy lady. So she was always trying to put a blanket down before she put me down, so she wouldn't let me down. Everyone carried me, I understand, twenty-four-seven, because there was nowhere they could lay me. And so, yeah, it was a horrid time for her, and I would think of all of the kids that she had, the four of us, that she probably would like me less because of what I put her through. But that hasn't been the case, obviously. But you think of childbirth and even going home to your own place, the kind of things... but imagine being in this little cubicle with the walls that don't even go up all the way, and there was not just the four of us, but we had Auntie Reiko and Auntie Mae in there, so I think there were six of us. And luckily, I guess she didn't have to do the cooking and stuff like that, but there was nothing to do except to worry about how to take care of me, and luckily she had to spend twenty-four hours a day trying to figure out how to get me milk, and they tried a lot of different stuff.

LT: So Sylvia was three years old. Do you know what life was like for Sylvia?

TT: Sylvia played all the time, and, you know, luckily, like Mom said, she lived to read and do art, so there was a lot of paper for her. She'd draw and she'd color and they did a lot of homeschooling, you know, they did a lot of reading and stuff like that. So for her, other than... I don't know if the filth bothered her. I don't know if a three-year-old, the filth would bother. I've never liked dirt, so for me it would bother me, but I don't know if it bothered her. But it can't be any kind of home you'd suggest in Better Homes & Gardens for someone to raise their child. But with Dad being free, too, he had time he could spend. But for him I think it was more of a... no work. So at first, for the first little while, it was like for him to be on a holiday, he hung out with the boys, they played softball every day, you know, and sat around and drank Coca-cola or something, I don't know. But for the women, especially one with a brand-new baby, and I think luckily we had my two aunts and they were there, so I was very pampered. I never had to look at any of the dirt, so that's a good thing for me. Maybe that's why I have this dirt fetish, you know, where I don't like to be around dirt, I don't like to go to picnics and stuff. [Laughs]

LT: You did mention the mud puddles.

TT: Yeah, there were mud puddles. And now Sylvia was talking, too, she's wondering if it was sewage and not streams and things like this. She says she can't remember there were any streams there, but I remember the mud puddles. I didn't get in them, but everyone else seemed to. But we did make mud pies and things, and now we're starting to wonder if that was runoff, because where Sylvia said the mud puddles were, it was near the latrine. So now I'm thinking... [laughs].

LT: That was special mud.

TT: That was special mud, oh, man.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright &copy; 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.