Ikuko "Cookie" Takeshita: My name is Cookie Ikuko Takeshita, born in Alameda, California. And I was twelve years old when Pearl Harbor was bombed. And that, of course, changed the lives of so many of us, especially Japanese Americans. The bombing took place on Sunday. When we went to school on Monday, our principal had the whole school assembled in the auditorium and reminded everyone that there were many Japanese Americans in our school. And you said, "Please remember that they are American citizens, they are not responsible for the bombing. We would make sure that everything will continue as before. However, today, we will leave at noon and everyone excused. Well, everybody was more excited about being excused from class, but the Japanese Americans were very gleeful that our principal, Harold Largeness, made this announcement. The most terrible thing was that we felt so guilty of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, although we had nothing to do with it.
In a matter of weeks and months, things changed so rapidly, especially in Alameda. Alameda was one of the three cities, I think, in the state of California that had to move almost immediately, apparently, because of the naval air station. At that time in 1942, it was just like a small airport. There was nothing that was the naval air station that it came to be. Most of our parents were Issei, first generation Japanese, who came from Japan, and they were the ones that had to move out first. And I think the deadline was February 22nd, that was the last day. So our whole family moved. But before we did, many things happened in Alameda. First of all, my father was very active in the Alameda Buddhist Temple, he was on the board of directors there. He also was very active in the Japanese school. Many of us went to the regular public schools in Alameda, and went to Japanese school to learn the Japanese language and to read and write. They felt that was, that it was important that we learn about our culture and also learn the language. However, immediately after December 7th, the Japanese school was closed down, I think that was a decision of our parents.
And we were given the notice that the church had to be closed, and so my father was actively helping put away many, many things from the altar and closing up the church, because they were told that the navy was going to take over the Buddhist Temple in Alameda. In the meanwhile, however, the FBI came into all the cities and towns. And in Alameda, my sister and I were going up Park Street to Long's to pick up toiletries because we were going to be moving the next day, February 22nd, that was the last day that my parents could be there. But as we were going down Park Street, we saw they took Mr. Nakata, that was the family that lived next door to the Buddhist temple, and the whole family was standing outside and they were crying, and we saw their father being taken away. There was a black limousine, and we knew immediately that that was the FBI, and they were arresting people that had been active in any kind of business or organization. And I suppose they must have thought that they would be very dangerous people. Well, that evening, my father came home and he had known about Mr. Nakata.
And we were leaving the next morning, and so some gentleman came and he said to my father, "You know, Mr. Takano, you better leave quickly, your name was on the list of the FBI, and they're rounding up all the Issei people. So the next morning, our friend came from the town of Centerville, which is now Fremont and loaded whatever we could onto the truck, and we went to Turlock. We left at five o'clock in the morning when it was dark, and we literally used the word we "escaped." But we didn't get there 'til five-thirty in the evening, there were no freeways, dirt roads, and my father said he was so relieved we got there safely because he said the FBI was all over Alameda. And the gentleman there said, well, the FBI was here all day today, and they just left. We thought the FBI was only in Alameda, and we discovered later they were in every major part of California and Washington and Oregon, rounding up people who were active in any association or whatever. We thought we would be there only temporarily until we got notice that they were building what they called "assembly centers," and that we're all going to have to leave the areas that we had moved to. And we left everything there, and we just went into the assembly centers with what we could carry, which was basically clothes, medication. And we ended up in a camp in Merced, and we were there from April to September, and then we were sent to Colorado. It was called, first, Granada, and later it was changed to Amache, Colorado.
I'll never forget the train ride. It took forever to get from Merced to Granada. We were on that train for three days' plus, because they would stop during the day for hours, and we'd run out of water in the train, and we would have to pull the shades down as another train would go by. The MPs would allow us to get off the train and into the desert where there were cactus and weeds and tumbleweeds, if we had to go to the bathroom, and we hid behind a cactus. But we had the MPs all with their guns aimed at us, and then I remember my mother would not turn her back to them. And when we finally got to Granada, we were taking off the train and put on another bus, and we were told that, "You are now going into the desert and we want to warn you that there are many kinds of insects and bugs. When you put your shoes on every morning, please shake out the shoes. You may have scorpions and centipedes because the place is full of it." And that, of course, frightened us. But when we got into the desert and we found barracks, we were astounded. Just one room for a family of eight. Some families did get two rooms, but we were a family of five and we had one small room and no water, just a potbelly stove because all of our meals and our bathrooms were in the public barracks. And everybody lined up and that's how we got our meals. Twenty cents for a whole week, maybe that's what the budget was for our food. And that, I think, accounts for the kind of food we had in camp.
Coming back to Alameda was wonderful, but again we had the same dilemma, many of us had nowhere to go. Getting started all over, we faced much prejudice, and people coming back were not able to rent or buy homes, and of course, many had lost their homes. But there was a family, and they contacted my father through the Red Cross, that's how a lot of contacts were made. So this is what we did. We happened to go to a market that was owned by a Chinese family, and they welcomed us back, and they said, "We're glad to see you back," and they said, "You know, you lost everything." I said, "Yes, we left everything in the house." My father's car was there, and we left furniture, everything. And she said, "Well, you know who has your piano? Your neighbor has your piano." And so my father said, "Well, that's one thing we'll have. We will pay her for the time she kept the piano for us." My father and I rang the doorbell, she looked shocked to see us and she said, "When did you get back?" and we said, "Oh, just about a month ago." And she said, "Oh." You could see she wasn't very happy. And I said, "We understand that you were nice enough to take the piano in to take care of us all these years, and we could see the piano right there. She was behind a screen door, she looked at us, and she said, "Well, I'm sorry, it's mine now." And she just slammed the door on us and we couldn't believe it. My father was very heartbroken about this because that was the one thing that was left in our house. I mean, everything was stolen. They said overnight, they said my father's second car had been stolen, the furniture was carried, within a week, everything was gone. And so we just, we just thought nothing was left. And since that was the only thing my father was so hopeful in getting it, but we did not get it back.
It dawned on me, when we were in camp, every single person was Japanese, Japanese American, and I guess we had we had a study ethic. Our parents always felt that if we studied hard and did well in school, why, life would be much easier than it had been for them. And it's one thing that we all felt, was that we still love this country despite what had happened to us. It was this Japanese mindset, that is a thing that got us through, that no matter what, you do your very, very best, regardless whether prejudice or whatever, unfair treatment, you do your very, very best. And we just couldn't just up and quit, because then we might not get another job. And I think there's one word that the Japanese have in the back of their mind, and it's called okagesama, and that means that we are not successful because we were so good by ourselves, it's because of all the help that we did get from others. And the word okagesama means, "kage" means "shadow," it means that everybody that you don't even know about, in the shadow, in the background, has made it possible for all of us to get where we are. And so I think that, at the end, most of us were very fortunate to have had those many people in the background that helped us get to that point. Isseis were not able to speak their mind, but we too stayed in the background and did not say very much. And finally, after fifty or sixty years, okagesama de, our history is coming out. Our story will be told, and it will be in the history of this country.