<Begin Segment 42>

AI: And excuse me, we kind of skipped over something here, because Mike had not been home for a while, actually. Mike had, was it in 1939 --

MY: He went to Japan.

TY: He went to Japan in 1939 to kendo school. And there, he got TB, and -- well, he must have been in, he said he was in a couple sanitariums --

MY: He said that he was in several sanitariums.

TY: Several sanitariums. Then, and then Mother went after him, to bring him home.

MY: That was 1940, a year before World War II.

TY: 1940, yeah. So he was in Japan, oh maybe about a year. And Mother went after him and he came home, and he was in bed from that point on, until... and December 7th he was still in bed. And I remember the FBI, when the FBI came, they made him come downstairs to sit in the living room with everybody. And I remember being very annoyed, mad about that because, I said, "Well, he's sick. He's not going to do anything up there. Why don't you let him stay?" And they said no, he'd have to come downstairs.

MY: Well, that, that was because about three -- isn't that funny, we had this discrepancy about the number of FBI men came. But one FBI, the rest, the two FBI men as I remember in my mind, left to go after Dad. They asked us where Dad was, and we said, "Well, he's not home. He's at this restaurant. He's at this senryukai meeting."

TY: Yeah, yeah.

MY: And then one FBI guy stayed, he stayed behind. And he was --

TY: No, what the discrepancy, I think that two FBI went to go after Dad, but there were at least three behind. Because one stayed with us in the living room, make sure that we didn't do anything, okay?

MY: Yeah.

TY: And the other two was the one that searched everything in the house.

MY: Oh, okay.

TY: They went down, they went in the kitchen, and opened up the kitchen cabinet, and dishes stacked up yea high, and they took each plate out and make sure there's nothing hidden between the dishes, I guess. Just looked through everything very thoroughly. They went, and they went downstairs and we had this big library, and they went through each book, page by page. They must have taken, I don't know how many hours.

MY: Hours, yeah.

TY: Hours doing that. They were very thorough, and they were searching. And, but the one always stayed in the, in the living with us.

MY: Living with us.

TY: Yeah. So my guess is there must have been at least five that came, two went after Dad, and three stayed behind. One watched us in the living room, the other two did the searching.

MY: Oh, yeah.

AI: And were you being questioned in the living room? Or basically just sitting there waiting for them --

TY: Well, about the extent of questioning goes, I do remember their going there, going through the closets, and looking at things. And they found my ROTC uniform. I just started university December, I mean, in September. I joined the ROTC. And I had my ROTC uniform hanging in the closet. And one of the guy was, the FBI was looking at it, he says, "What's this uniform doing in your closet?" I said I was in ROTC.

MY: He didn't know what it was?

TY: Yeah. I just was amazed that he even asked that stupid question, because it had the logo thing with the ROTC, very obvious that's what it was. And he questioned about it, and I think they took that uniform with them. And I had to get it back because, to get a refund on the uniform at the university over -- had to return it. So that was really strange.

MY: I, one of the agents --

TY: I thought, they're so dumb.

MY: Yeah, one of the agents asked us if we were American citizens. I forgot how the question was couched, but I said, "No, I'm not an American citizen." And he said, "Why?" And I said, "Because I was born in, I was born in Japan." And he said, "Why didn't you get an American citizenship?" And I remember being very surprised that an FBI agent did not know that Japanese people couldn't --

TY: Why you can't, yeah.

MY: -- why the Japanese people couldn't become American citizen. And I remember kind of being taken aback by that. He said, "Why? Why aren't you an American citizen?" In a kind of very hostile manner. And...

TY: And another thing I remember is when Joe, when he was about ten then, nine or ten then?

JY: Nine.

TY: Ten.

JY: Nine.

TY: Nine? And we were all sittin' on the couch, and we were sitting, windows are back of us. And so being the young kid as he is, he was curious. He just turned around and looked outside the window. I think we had, I'm not sure whether we had venetian blind or something. It was drawn, anyway, that curtain. And so he looked outside. And the FBIs chastised him, said, "Don't do that." And scolded him, and told him to turn around. And that upset me, sort of. I thought, "What can a young kid do?" But, that I remember, too.

MY: And then Mom came home.

TY: Shortly thereafter, yeah.

MY: Yeah. And she said --

TY: In Japanese.

MY: She came home, and then she, we ran to the door and she, we opened the door, and she said, "Kore, doshita?"

TY: "Doshita?"

MY: "Doshita no?" And she saw these guys, these hakujins standing in, she said, "I saw the hakujin guys standing behind you," and she said, "Kono hitotachi wa dare, dare no." She got really nervous. And she remembers that they said to her, "Don't speak in Japanese, don't speak in Japanese." So she said, she continued to ask, talk in Japanese, and she remembers the FBI agent yelling at her not to speak in Japanese. And she came in, and she said that she got a ride home from a friend, and as she was stepping out of the car, she stumbled, and she skinned her knee, and her knee was bleeding. So she wanted to go upstairs to wash it, and put a band-aid on it, and she says she started -- the stairway was right there by the hallway, she started walking up the stairs, and the guy came over and they said, asked her, "Where are you going?" And she said, "I'm just going to go to the bathroom to wash" -- and she showed him this knee. And so he came up with her. And she said, "And he followed me into the bathroom." And so, to make sure that she didn't do anything. And so, and she was just kind of in shock. Because she didn't have any idea what was going on. We couldn't explain it to her at that point. And then she described to my, to Jeni, right? About all of the scene we had, that he described, about the FBI agent searching the house.

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.