Museum of Riverside

Lesson Three Lily Fujimoto Taka Oral History

Lily Fujimoto was pregnant with her first child when she was relocated with her family to Poston, Arizona. She left Poston and moved with her husband, brother and daughter to Des Moines, Iowa, before returning to Riverside in the 1980’s.
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"The day that we left, the camp people, some of them, came to say goodbye to us, and the kitchen gave us a bottle of baby formula. It was cold. The bottle of milk was cold. So as we were going toward the border, we wanted to stop at a restaurant so that the milk could be warmed. This lady at the restaurant said, "Sure." She took the milk, put it in a pan of water, and was going to boil it. As we were waiting, she suddenly turned around and said, "Hey, are you Japs?" I said, "Well, we're Japanese American." "Well," she said, "you just take this and get out of here, and don't ever come back." She watched us as we were leaving with her hands on her hips. That was a bad experience."