<Begin Segment 9>

SS: Harvey, when did you find out that war had broken out, that the Japanese had bombed Pearl Harbor?

HW: Well, it's kind of an interesting story. I took a weekend off from Fort Lewis, where I was in training, and came to Seattle. Because when I had visited home in, earlier in the summer, somebody wanted me to get the message over to somebody that lives in Seattle here, and worked at a certain, Paramount Restaurant, so I remember. So I came to Seattle on Friday, December the 5th, and went to the Paramount Restaurant, delivered the letter. And on the way back I made the mistake of figuring that Seventh Avenue would take me back to Jackson Street, and it didn't. I took me right back up to the top of the hill, which is now Yesler Terrace. And I couldn't get off of that, so I had to back around and walk around to get down to Jackson Street. And I was looking around, and a couple of ladies came walking along, young ladies, and they said -- they looked at me and saw that I was a GI and said, "Do you wanna go to a social we're having?" And they grabbed me by the arm and took me to the church, where they were having a church social. And I had a nice time. I went back to the hotel that I had a room in, and stayed overnight. And I visited around, looked around Seattle, Saturday. And Seattle's a nice quiet town. If you can believe how quiet it could be, especially on weekends and, so I decided instead of staying 'til Sunday, I would just go home. Saturday night, I decided to hop a bus and go back. So I got back into camp and into my bunkbed about twelve o'clock at night, Saturday night. And I was having a nice sleep, sleeping through, and somebody was shaking me in the morning. And I looked over at my buddy in the next bunk and he says, "Harvey, get up. Get up." I said, "What for?" And he says, "Listen to the radio." And I listened to the radio and it says, "Pearl Harbor is being bombed." That was Sunday morning. I was sleeping in real late that morning, and I think it was ten o'clock. And then, of course, soon after that we got the word to get ready to go. You know, mobilize.

SS: What were you thinking at that point, when you heard that it was indeed Japan?

HW: It was, yeah. That it was, it was a real war. That's the only way I can figure it.

SS: Were you at that point thinking, "What'll happen to me? I'm Japanese American"?

HW: Well, no. I wasn't thinking about that particularly. I was thinking that this was such an unfortunate thing to happen, that there had to be a war between two countries, especially war with a country that my parents came from. Although they had already told me over and over again that their home is here in America.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.