Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Shig Miyaki Interview
Narrator: Shig Miyaki
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary); Barbara Takei (secondary)
Location: Torrance, California
Date: September 22, 2009
Densho ID: denshovh-mshig_2-01-0008

<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So let's keep moving. So you're Terminal Island. After December 7th, at some point, the government decided that they needed to round up the men, the fishermen.

SM: Yeah, uh-huh.

TI: Can you describe that, what day that was, and what happened?

SM: I don't remember exactly when it was, but it was soon after the war broke out that these FBI, or they called them FBI, they came and then rounded up all the alien male.

TI: Were you on the island when this happened?

SM: Oh, yeah.

TI: Okay. So when you say the FBI, do you recall what you saw? Were there very many men that came on the island, or just a few?

SM: No, there was a whole bunch of 'em. They were, I guess they were deputized or whatever. And they were not regular FBI agents, but they probably picked them off the street to act as FBI agents. And they went, came through, they went through all the houses, anyway.

TI: And as they went through the houses, they would just identify the, almost the male...

SM: Well, they looked through everything they could think of to determine if we had any contraband or whatever.

TI: Did they have lists of names to pick up, or did they just pick up people?

SM: Well, I guess they must have had the names, because they took all the alien male into custody, and they shipped them out to... well, we didn't know where they went at first, but we found out they went to Bismarck.

TI: And the treatment, when these men came through, how did they treat people as they went from house to house?

SM: Well, I don't know exactly how you would describe that. But they just went through everything that we had.

TI: And did you have any conversations with any of those men as they were, like, going through your house? Did you ever talk with them, did they ask you any questions?

SM: Not that I remember, you know. They more or less went on their own to check whatever there was.

TI: As this was happening to your house, do you remember kind of a feeling, like how you felt? Do you remember any thoughts about that?

SM: Well, it's... well, it was kind of humiliating to have them go through all your stuff, whatever, written or letters or whatever you had.

TI: And how much warning did you have that these men were gonna come through your house and take your father?

SM: I don't think there was any warning at all; they just came down and took him.

TI: And then after they left with your father, what did you do? With your mother, you, your brothers, what happened?

SM: Well, there were hardly anything to do. And I don't think we did anything. And until they came out with this order that we had to leave in forty-eight hours.

TI: And do you recall the time between they took your father and how quickly you had to then leave Terminal Island?

SM: Well, it was quite some time. See, the war broke out in December, and we were, evacuated Terminal Island, I think it was later part of February. So it was quite a bit of time there.

TI: So during that time period, after they took away your father and the other Issei men, and so you, your family had to, essentially, survive without the fishermen, what did you guys do? How did you survive without the fishing?

SM: I really don't know. [Laughs]

TI: But the whole community must have really struggled.

SM: Yeah.

TI: Because essentially that's their livelihood.

SM: There were a lot of people there that were financially in trouble, I would say.

TI: Was there any, sort of, help or support from other Japanese communities in southern California in terms of either money or food?

SM: If there was, I don't know. But during the evacuation, I remember a lot of people from L.A., especially the L.A. Produce Market, they used to have trucks that they sent trucks down to Terminal Island to haul some of the stuff that we could take to different parts of southern California.

TI: So they would send trucks so that your belongings, you could put on the truck and they could do that. Going back to your family, so did your mother kind of take care of things or did you have to kind of step in and help your mother during this time, to run the household?

SM: Well, I guess it kind of ran by itself, you know. Everything was like it was with just the father not being there.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.