<Begin Segment 19>

DG: Okay, now you... there's a lot of details I want to know. Let's start back when they picked out the ten of you here. The war had already started. So...

BU: Yeah. It was about almost a year, ten months.

DG: Oh. Well, so what time are we talking about?

BU: You see, they picked us out in May. You were supposed to go to Puyallup on the 20th, twenty-something, of May.

DG: Okay. So, okay, now when the war started --

BU: Yeah.

DG: -- you were at the U.

BU: Yeah.

DG: And what was your feeling?

BU: It was terrible. I tell you exactly where we were. My brother and I were down, down there at the public library studying. You know why? You see, we didn't have room enough at the house where we were living. There was four, four kids and mother, and father so six were living in the back end of the dry cleaning place.

DG: Oh, you were living behind your business.

BU: Behind and so there wasn't much room so, therefore, every Saturday and Sunday we'd go down to the public library to study. So that's what happened.

DG: And that's where you were?

BU: That's where we were when the war started.

DG: Did you know the war might come?

BU: Well, no, I didn't know the war was going to come, but sure found out in a hurry because two things happened: one, the hakujins all ignored you. They looked at you, gave you a dirty look, and when we found out, we left, we left the building to come back home. And then first thing, though, there was a place we used to always get hamburger because it's only ten cents so we came out to hamburger and they wouldn't serve you.

DG: No kidding?

BU: Yeah.

DG: So what did you think might happen to you?

BU: Well, he says, "They can't do anything to us, we're American citizens," that's what he said. That's what I was telling my brother. My brother, who's Kibei, said, "No, no." Kibei, he is going to be ostracized anyway. As long as they know he is Kibei, they'll put him in somewhere. But, anyway, it's only February when the, when President Roosevelt wrote the edict.

DG: Right.

BU: That the camp we're going to be.

DG: And then so you continued to school until May.

BU: Until May, yeah.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.