by Ruth Sasaki
“We’ve been sweeping & mopping but still the dust won’t go away…“
In September of 1942, Tanforan internees began to be transferred to Topaz Relocation Center in the Utah desert. They wrote from ancient trains carrying them to an unknown and unknowable future, drawing comfort from the kindness of Pullman dining car waiters:
September 21, 1942
To Tomiko Takahashi, Bldg. 80 – Apt. 3, Tanforan Assembly Center, San Bruno, CA
From a friend, en route from Tanforan to Topaz, Utah
What a night on this antique pullman…
The colored waiters are so nice & thoughtful…
Enjoying the luxury of our first civilized meal (breakfast) in 4 months: tomato juice, oatmeal, scrambled eggs, pork sausages, milk or coffee…
Nothing but miles of sage & desert now. They’re going to let us off for 30 minutes about 9:30…
Educated folks wrote each other often and described their feelings in letters to friends.
there were no telephones to call them.
the hot bed of extra-fine dust, floating up into the air and staying there…the road being “terrific”
I looked the word up in the dictionary, and subsequently, the word “terror” meaning extreme fear….
use of terror to intimidate people, especially for political reasons, as in terrorism, and weapons of
terror. how fitting for our government to put Japanese internees up in horse stalls, then send them to the dust bowls of the American desert.