Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: June M. Hoshida Honma Interview
Narrator: June M. Hoshida Honma
Interviewer: Megan Asaka
Location: Torrance, California
Date: July 9, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-hjune-01-0005

JH: Well, they picked us up sometime in the afternoon, I remember, in an army truck. We were taken down to Hilo port and put on the interisland boat. And I'd never been on this huge ship before, so my mother made friends with some of the people that were going into internment camp.

MA: And what was Sand Island like? I know you were young, but what...

JH: It was a two-story building with fencing around it, barbed wire on the top, and there was a large enough grassy area where all the people that were kept there until it was time for us to go up. And since Aiko Herzig said we were POWs, I guess we were POWs in that Sand Island. They put the teenage boys and the young men in one room, they put mothers and children in another room, and the women, who were single, in another room. So it was like a dormitory. They had, like in the submarines they would have bunks, so they had bunks, one on top of the other. And there wasn't much to do. All I remember is my mother used to have to stand in line behind these women to heat up the milk for my sister.

MA: And who were the guards?

JH: You know, I never saw any. We were locked in there. So you couldn't get out. And I guess it's that gaman, shikata ga nai thing that they went through. But most of them knew that eventually they'll see their fathers and husbands.

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