Tulare Assembly Center

The First Stop

"We were lucky we got a mattress."

"They told us to go to the railroad station with one suitcase each and we waited for the train and the train came and there were a lot of people there from Los Angeles...We had to keep all the blinds down. But the train operator was mad at the place so he jerked the train and, you know, people had to stay in their seats otherwise they would - one girl broke her arm because she was on the aisle and the train just jerked, so she broke her arm. That’s all I know...

You know, the train was full so we ended up in Tulare, California, and right by the camp was barbed wire fence. We went and we were lucky we got a mattress for our cot, but some people, they had to get hay and put it in a sack for a mattress."

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