I remember a bus ride. I didn’t have a clue where Tanforan was; to me, it was just a far-away place.
Our family was assigned to a room in a barrack—six families to a barrack—and told to take a mattress ticking bag and fill it with hay from a horse stall. These were the mattresses for the Army cots, of which there were five in our room. I thought we were actually fortunate to be in a barrack, because at least it was new, not the dusty, smelly old horse stalls that some people had to live in. Of course, the walls of these barracks didn’t reach the ceiling/roof, so everyone could hear everything anyone said or did.
One of my chores was to sweep and dust the room. I remember when the knotholes in the floor fell out, I could just sweep the dust into the holes. I thought that was pretty neat!
About the contributor: Grace Mori Saito Tom grew up in Chinatown in Oakland, CA. She was 11 and attending Lincoln Elementary School when Pearl Harbor was attacked. The family was sent to Tanforan and later, Topaz. After the War, Grace’s family was among the last to leave Topaz, having nowhere to go. They returned to the San Francisco Bay Area, where the family lived in one room at a church hostel. Grace wrote her memoir in 1999 and passed away the same year.
Copyright 1999, Grace Mori Saito Tom. All rights reserved.