<Begin Segment 10>

TY: And another -- so we stayed in that house, that old house in Remington Court, must've been a couple year -- just a couple years, I guess, then, because we moved to the house across the street from that, remember?

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: Where Joe was born? Well, I, because I remember with my -- one Christmas --

MY: Must've been more than a couple years because Joe was --

TY: Oh, that's right. Joe was --

MY: Yeah, about four and --

TY: -- I was ten when he was born.

MY: Yeah. Right. Yeah.

TY: Okay. Well, anyway, whatever. Another instance I remember about that old house is that one Christmas Eve, folks -- Dad apparently bought me a movie projector that you crank, the old-fashioned one. And he and his friend were settin' up Christmas Eve to make sure it was -- to learn how to run it so they could run it for me when I got up, or from -- it was for my brother and myself, I guess. And I remember we're hearing this click, click, click, click, click, click, when you're sleeping. So I couldn't, I thought, "I wonder what that noise is?" So I kind of got up, and I think I poked my brother. And we both snuck down the stairway, halfway down, you know, we're trying to, we're watching. They're trying to work, and they were swearing in Japanese. I remember saying words that I never recognized. [Laughs] And they --

MY: They were trying to work the machine? The projector?

TY: Yeah, I think it was Mr. Tokushige.

MY: I think, I think that machine probably, my dad used to be-, Dad used to befriend a lot of bachelors.

TY: Yeah.

MY: So we had these sort of uncles around all the time. And that all, during Christmas we -- they gave us all these very fancy things --

TY: Gifts and things?

MY: -- toys. Yeah. And that was one of them.

TY: Maybe -- yeah, maybe it was, but it, and I think it was Mr. Tokushige. Anyway, they were working on it for, for hours. And we're standing there -- sitting on the stair, I think we just --

MY: Did you --

TY: -- we were there about an hour --

MY: Were they showing a --

TY: -- watching -- what?

MY: Were they showing a film?

TY: No, they were, they were trying to --

MY: They were trying to figure it out?

TY: -- feed the -- no. They were trying to feed the film onto the, into the projector, and they couldn't do it. They were -- I don't know. They were having all kinds of problem with it. And it took, they took a long time. They finally gave up and went to sleep. But that, that's another thing that I remember for some reason.

MY: I remember that projector --

TY: You do?

MY: -- because we had the kids in the neighborhood come over, the neighborhood kids come over.

TY: Yeah, and then Dad bought Charlie Chaplin movies with that.

MY: I still have that. I still have that 16-millimeter --

TY: It's a 16-mil-, it's a 16-millimeter?

MY: Yeah. And it's in a little --

TY: It's a little, just 16-millimeter projector. It was a -- no. It was --

MY: It was --

TY: -- 35-, 35-millimeter projector, was it --

MY: Oh. Well, anyway, it's pretty fat, you know. It's pretty heavy. It's still in that can. I still have it.

TY: It is?

MY: Yeah.

TY: Wow. Why don't you bring it over sometime? [Laughs]

MY: I don't, I don't know who has any -- I don't know if anybody has a projector who, that we could use.

TY: Well, we could --

JY: Are you talking about the one --

TY: Maybe you could go to the Salvation Army.

MY: Charlie Chaplin.

JY: -- dropped ice cream and all that stuff?

TY: Yeah.

MY: Yeah. You remember that?

JY: I remember that, yeah.

TY: Oh, that, that was --

JY: We still have that?

MY: So that's -- yeah, I still have that.

TY: Well, that's what she says.

JY: I'll be darned.

MY: But I -- we had a lot of other ones --

TY: Yeah.

MY: -- but I think that was the one, maybe it was the one the FBI returned. And I know the rest of them, they, they didn't return them.

JY: Oh, that's right. We're were talking about --

TY: Well, we have, we have an awful lot of --

MY: Home movies.

TY: -- Kodachrome pictures, movie, movies that Dad took that we -- I don't think FBI returned those.

JY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: So, so the movies that Dad took with the -- what is it? 16-millimeter camera?

TY: Yeah. It was a 16-millimeter camera first.

MY: A lot of it, the -- we just have a few that you picked up that was returned. And so there -- yeah, there are a lot that I remember that they didn't -- and pictures of Joe when he was a baby.

TY: Yeah, there's an awful lot of picture of him.

MY: Yeah, and we never got those back.

TY: No.

MY: But then the ones that they, they did return after World War II, we noticed that they returned the ones where they had those, the Shriner Parades in front of the Smith Tower.

TY: Yeah. There was a Potlatch Parade.

MY: And then he, he took those pictures of the ships out at Alki Beach and so forth. And I kind of theorized that what they did was they kind of looked at all the films, and, and they kept what they thought were incriminating evidence because they were looking for incriminating --

TY: Yeah, right.

MY: -- evidence to, to keep Dad detained, right? And so they thought that the pictures of his scanning the horizon --

TY: Uh-huh.

MY: -- taking pictures of the ships out there and those pictures of the Japanese --

TY: Yeah, but what was --

MY: -- sailors, you know.

TY: -- but that, the pictures that, that we saw were Japanese naval ships.

MY: Yeah, yeah. Exactly. And so they, those are the ones that they picked out as the ones that they thought were suspicious or whatever. And then they were also wanting to in-, to identify the Japanese naval officers.

TY: That could be.

MY: You know, pictures of you and Joe.

TY: Yeah.

MY: I mean, I'm not in those.

TY: No, Mike.

MY: Mike. You and Mike with these Japanese naval officers. The pictures of those parades and pictures of the sea-, the seashore and the, the horizon --

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: -- and the beach. And all the rest of the -- you know, like the family pictures --

TY: They must have --

MY: -- of Joe as a baby.

JY: -- they must have thrown it out. They could have thrown it out.

MY: And our, our playing and romping around in the back yard and up, we went up to Mount Rainier and so forth. They took, put that aside because they weren't interested in those --

TY: That could be.

MY: I mean, they didn't see, they weren't, they didn't have to have any political meaning. And so --

JY: And so you're saying those are the ones that got lost maybe?

MY: Those are the ones they threw away, probably.

JY: We never got 'em back? That could be.

MY: And then they kept the ones that they had --

TY: Just a handful of them.

MY: They were part of Dad's file.

TY: They must've had --

MY: Well, they had --

TY: -- at least fifty, fifty to a hundred --

MY: They had a whole box of them.

MY: So they just had those few reels that they kept, right? And those are the ones that you got back.

TY: Apparently.

MY: And so the ones that we wanted --

TY: Yeah.

MY: -- were, were lost. And the, and the ones that just --

JY: That makes sense. Yeah, that makes sense.

MY: Does it? Figure -- that just makes sense that -- yeah.

AI: So just to clarify that, what you've all been referring to now is that much later --

MY: -- during World War II --

AI: -- in your family during, when Pearl Harbor was bombed and your father was picked up by the FBI that the FBI also picked up all these materials and records and films and pictures.

MY: Yeah, they came to the house, and they searched the house.

AI: Right. So -- which I think we'll go into in more detail a little bit later on.

MY: Later on.

TY: Yeah, right. Okay.

AI: But at this point it sounds like not only did you have a lot of activities at home and your father was very active, but he also recorded some of these in pictures and film.

MY: Yeah. Family pictures. Lot of family pictures we were just waving and... [Laughs] We didn't know -- in those days you didn't, you'd have a movie camera and we all kind of stand.

TY: We're all standing still and then waving.

JY: He must have, he must have just gotten that. And so it was like a toy.

MY: Yeah. It was a toy. It was my dad's toy.

JY: And so we'd go out, and he'd bring it out and do whatever, like people do now, I guess. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.