Those who “passed” the “loyalty test” could get a day pass to leave camp and go into Delta, the nearest town, or Salt Lake City, which was four hours from Delta by train. You had to climb in the back of a truck to get a ride to Delta, so usually it was the young people who went. When Kiyo and her friends went, everyone in their block asked them to pick up this or that, so that their entire leave time was spent shopping. They brought empty suitcases with just a few clothes so that they could bring back all the requested items. When the train was crowded, they had to sit on their suitcases in the bathroom all the way—a four-hour trip!
Kiyo remembered staying in a hotel with one of her Nisei (second generation) woman friends. Another friend who had relocated to Salt Lake arranged a “triple date” with her brother and two of his friends. They couldn’t go drinking or dancing because Salt Lake City was a Mormon town, so they had to drive outside of the city and go to a “chicken dinner place” along the highway. She remembered being dismayed to realize that African American soldiers in uniform were not allowed into those places, and they weren’t served at the counter of Walgreen’s.
“As the War Relocation Authority’s ‘resettlement’ program became more streamlined, many Nisei who were not constrained by family obligations sought to leave camp.”
But limited jaunts to Delta or Salt Lake City served as only a brief respite. As the War Relocation Authority’s “resettlement” program became more streamlined, many Nisei who were not constrained by family obligations sought to leave camp. My mother, tired of waiting for Kiyo to marry first, married in 1943. She honeymooned in Salt Lake City with my soldier dad. In March 1944 Tomi applied for, and was granted, indefinite leave clearance. She and my dad went to Chicago on one of his furloughs to check out the scene. They visited Tomi’s younger brother, Shig, who was by now doing graduate work at the University of Chicago, as well as many other Nisei friends who had resettled in the Chicago area.
Tomi returned to Topaz enthused about resettling and finding work outside camp. She started planting the seed among her immediate family. There were options besides Chicago: a Nisei friend from whom she had assumed the directorship of preschool programs in Topaz had moved to Massachusetts to attend teachers’ college, and Tomi was being encouraged to go east on a work-study arrangement.
Thank you for sharing these stories. They give a fine tuning to history most US citizens never told.