I will celebrate my 100th birthday this week! But I still remember going to Tanforan and Topaz with my family in 1942. I was 16 years old. To me, it was an adventure. I remember running around the racetrack at Tanforan with my friends, pretending we were horses in a horse race. And I remember a military man with a weapon walking down the aisle on the train to Topaz, offering milk–but only for children or old people. I didn’t care because I didn’t like milk.
Before the War, my family lived in Oakland, California. My father, Tadaaki Frank Morita, worked in Piedmont as a chauffeur and maintenance man; then he went into gardening. He created a beautiful garden in our home in Oakland.
My mother, Sumiko, did not speak English and was busy raising children. By the time we arrived in Tanforan, there were eight of us children: Walton, 17; me, 16; Kaoru, 15; Joe, 13; George, 11; Frank, 8: Arlene, 6; and Stanley, 2. Our youngest brother Ronald was born in Topaz in 1945.
In Topaz, my dad worked as a chauffeur for camp administrators. We had two “apartments” in Block 35 because of the size of our family. My dad hung a partition between the boys and the girls.
I didn’t have any responsibility for my younger siblings; as far as I was concerned, they were on their own! We all sat with friends during meals in the mess hall, and I spent most of my free time with friends, either in their barrack or in the recreation hall. I remember moving tables in the mess hall so we could have a dance. Someone with a record player played big band music that was popular at the time. I was in the first class to graduate from Topaz High School.