<Begin Segment 2>

[Translated from Japanese]

TY: When you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor... It was on December 8, 1941, wasn't it? [Ed. note: In the U.S., it is recorded as December 7. At the time of the bombing, it was already December 8 in Japan.]

AT: Yeah.

TY: How did you know about it?

AT: Oh, hey, as the advertisement of the newspapers, extra was issued. They shouted, "Extra! Extra!" They said that Pearl Harbor was attacked, it was attacked, and everybody was looking through the windows, and those who were staying below went out to the sidewalks. Then, those Kibei, on the car, they attached and it went rattle rattle, rattle rattle. They went around and made noise.

TY: They put empty cans, empty cans on the car.

AT: They rolled thread on empty cans.

DG: It was in Salt Lake, wasn't it?

AT: Yeah, and then...

TY: Was it in Seattle?

AT: No, no, in Salt Lake.

TY: It was in Salt Lake. When you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor, that was when you were in Seattle, wasn't it? Anxious, what everybody was anxious about finally happened.

AT: Yeah, that's right. And, evacuation, they had to evacuate to the camps. But, we had three girls with us.

TY: That's right.

DG: What did you think about when the war started?

AT: I thought that Japan did such an unreasonable thing. [Laughs] There was no way Japan could win. Why don't you compare the U.S. and Japan? In Japan, they were suffering from this anyway. In this country, quite, this, what, they had quite a few military equipment... they bought them, and Japan had already run out of money then. Because they started under such condition, it was said that Japan was quite stupid, it was said quite a bit. But, Kibei people weren't like that. Kibei people said that we were saying a lot of things about the U.S., but Japanese, Japanese have the soul of Japanese, and they were talking big like that. They said such things, but Terao said, "However much souls they had, if they didn't have this [Ed. note: money], and they actually don't have food, don't you think it is hopeless?" Then, they would say, "No, Ojisan. Don't you worry. We'll win." Kibei people said so, and whenever we talked like that, they got mad right away. "Even so, neither the hakujin's newspapers nor the Japanese newspapers are publishing lies," we said. "Look, Japan has been defeated very badly."

TY: That was soon after the war started, wasn't it?

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.