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LG: All right. Shifting a little bit, your parents and your family were incarcerated?

DM: Yes, yes.

LG: Do you have memories of that time?

DM: All I remember, and I don't really remember this. Because by then I was four years old. I remember tension, I knew something was wrong, but I didn't know what. And I just sort of went along with the process. I'm sure they had to act, they had to prepare themselves to leave their home, that I don't remember. That I don't remember. The first thing I remember is going to the assembly center and being put in the stalls where the horses had been, and the smell of manure. You know, it was just a small stall, and there had to be five of us in there. So I remember it was tight, and the most scary thing I remember is the outhouses. I thought the holes were like this, and I was so afraid I was going to fall in. And that is very vivid in my mind, being so afraid of falling in to the... I'll leave it at that. [Laughs] But those are the two things I vividly remember. And also I remember people lined up to go in to eat, I remember the long lines.

LG: Do you know which assembly center?

DM: You know, I wish I did, but I don't know. I don't know. But all I know, it was a racetrack, it was a racetrack.

LG: Which incarceration camp did was your family in?

DM: First we were taken to Tule Lake, and it seems as though we lived so long in Tule Lake, and of all the camps I went to, I think we were in Tule Lake the longest. But when they decided to separate the "no-nos" and the "yes-yeses," well, my parents were "yes-yeses." So we, of course, had to be taken from Tule Lake to another camp so that they could bring in the "no-nos." So I remember moving. I remember going on a train, and I remember... the nice thing I remember is they used to pass out sandwiches, which I thought was wonderful. And I remember the soldiers with their rifles, and you know, for some reason I thought it was the soldiers with the rifles who gave us the sandwiches, but I think I'm mistaken. I don't know who it was who gave us the sandwiches, but I thought it was great. Riding on a train and eating a sandwich when you're four years old, don't know where you're going on and what'll happen.

LG: Was it just your immediate family that was taken there, or were you --

DM: We tried, and I think we were successful in keeping my grandmother -- who was widowed -- and her children with us. So my dad was responsible for the two families. And as I recall, I remember my grandmother being in Amache or Rohwer with us. So I'm assuming that every time we moved, they moved with us as a combined family.

LG: Do you know where you moved to after Tule Lake?

DM: Yes, we went to Amache in Colorado. So you know, I didn't know this "no-no," "yes-yes" thing, but that's, now I realize that's why we left Tule Lake and went to Colorado. And so we were in Colorado, and the time I was there, I don't know... and these are questions I should have asked my parents, how long we were in Amache. Because when we were in Amache, my dad was interviewed to be drafted. He told me the story just before he passed away. He did a lot of talking just before he passed away, and he told me that... and I guess he was considered a draft resister because he told them, "No, I can't go into the service unless you let me take my family home and I know that they're safe." Now, he knew that was impossible. So the fellow who was interviewing him said, "I can't do that." And so my dad said, "Then I can't serve. I can't serve." And he says, "You'll have to put me in jail," because that's what they were doing to them. So I don't know who this fellow was, but he said to my dad, "There are people who are leaving camp and going to Jersey because there's a man there who is hiring people in New Jersey. So you try and get there, and if you get out of camp, you can take your family with you." My dad, in the meantime, had written to Georgia. Because he had been involved in fruit, he thought maybe he could get a job in Georgia, and you know, they were in need of help because the men were in the service. So he wrote to Georgia and asked them, but he was rejected, I think because he was Japanese and coming out of camp. But Mr. Seabrook took twenty-five hundred people of Japanese descent to work in Seabrook, and my father was one of the first to come here. When we came here, we had the pick of all the apartments in Seabrook, because there were five, six families at the most dotted around the village. So it was wonderful. Anyway, we were in Amache, my dad left to come to Seabrook, we had to move because they were going to close Amache, so we moved to Rohwer. So during that time my dad was away, my mom and my grandfather had to move us to Rohwer. So when my dad worked here for six months and established himself and was hired, he came back to Rohwer to get us.

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