I was 14 years old in 9th grade when we arrived at Topaz. Our family consisted of my mother and father, my aunt, my older sisters Eiko and Teru, and myself. We came from a wonderful home on Buchanan Street, just up the street from the center of Japantown in San Francisco. My father worked in the import/export business and my mother took care of us. There was a two-year age difference between the three of us sisters; we always had matching dresses and spent time in the summer in Carmel.
My sister Eiko was studying at Cal Berkeley, and my sister Teru and I were in high school when our lives changed forever. We had to leave everything behind. But we had each other and my parents always kept us together, even to eat our meals and sit together in the Topaz mess hall.
Our block was on the end and our room looked out over the desert. My father had friends who helped to build small dividers in our space to provide privacy. He worked in the Topaz administration office, and my mother and aunt worked in the mess hall of the block next to ours. My parents were paid a very small amount of money that they could use to purchase necessities from the Coop Store
I remember staying home from school to run out when the coal truck came to drop the coal at our block, to get as much coal as I could so our family could stay warm. And the horrible dust storms that we could see coming: we put cloth over our faces and stayed inside because the dust came in and made it hard to breathe.
