<Begin Segment 43>

TY: But I think when they left, they took several boxes of things. And I don't know what they -- I know one thing that he had, all the movie, film that Dad had. Family film --

MY: Family movies, yeah.

TY: -- in the box. And some books, and I don't know what other items they took with them.

MY: Well, the --

JY: They took the short-wave radio, I remember that.

TY: Huh?

MY: Short-wave radio.

TY: We had a short-wave radio?

JY: Well, yeah. You know, that console radio? That I used to watch -- listen to Captain Midnight and Jack Armstrong?

TY: That's the big, the big console radio?

JY: Yeah, great big thing.

MY: And Jack Armstrong.

TY: Yeah, they took that radio?

JY: No, they didn't take the whole thing. They reached in and, I don't know if they just took the whole radio component in there, or whether -- because it had a record player, too. But there was a short-wave radio that was in there, and they took that out, and took that away.

TY: What, you mean a record player, that wind, Victrola record player that we had?

MY: No, no, that's a --

TY: Which record player are you talking about?

JY: No, this was, it was part of the radio.

TY: Part of the radio?

JY: Yeah, it was a great big thing we had. And I used to, the cloth in front of it was all worn out because I used to put my ear to it.

TY: We had a console radio that was yea high...

JY: Yeah.

TY: About this big and this deep --

JY: Yeah.

TY: That you and I used to listen to. Remember there was indentation where the speaker is?

MY: Yeah. [Laughs]

TY: Yeah, we were leaning on it. Well, that's the only radio I remember in the living room.

JY: That's the one I'm talking about.

MY: That's the one he's talking about.

JY: And it had a short-wave radio --

TY: And there was a short-wave radio thing inside that?

JY: 'Cause I can remember --

TY: I don't remember that.

JY: -- toying with it. You know, I could never get anything. But it was, it would, you'd hear [makes wailing sound], trying to tune in on something?

TY: Well that's in, you turn the knob, and you put it on a short-wave wavelength.

JY: Right, right. And I didn't quite know how to do that, and so it didn't work. But it wasn't like I was listening to it all the time, or trying to, but I remember trying. But that, that was specifically why they went in there. Because they thought Dad would be listening to messages from Japan.

TY: So they took that, that component out of the radio?

JY: Uh-huh.

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: Gosh, I don't remember that at all.

MY: They took one --

JY: Well, you didn't care about it. But that was my radio. I used to listen to it all the time. [Laughs]

MY: They took a box full of Japanese books.

TY: Japanese books, yeah, came.

MY: And then Dad had that desk, remember? That desk that --

TY: The roll-top desk, yeah.

MY: The roll-top desk? And that was full of his writings. A lot of the senryu writings were in Japanese. And he used to make a lot of speeches, remember?

TY: Yeah, right.

MY: And a lot of those were in Japanese.

TY: He kept them all, yeah.

MY: And then he had some Japanese letters, from Japan, from our relatives, from his rela-, from our relatives. And so they took all of that. All of the material that -- of course, they just took all the contents of his, of his desk drawer, into that box. And, so that must have covered about, at least one or two boxes.

TY: Well, it was several boxes, I know.

MY: And the books were mainly Japanese, the senryukai Japanese books, and the tsukukai books, he had a lot of subscriptions to Japanese magazines, and --

JY: And you mentioned the movies? With us...

MY: Uh-huh.

TY: Remember Dad had a trophy cup that said that he was the vice-president of Japanese Chamber of Commerce, or some organization, with a red ribbon on it. Did they take that, too?

JY: I don't even remember that.

TY: You remember that, you remember that cup?

MY: No.

TY: Oh. It was when he was elected vice-president of this organization, whatever it was. I can't remember.

MY: He was vice-president of a lot of organizations.

TY: Yeah, well this was, I don't know. But I remember he was vice-president of --

MY: You didn't see it.

TY: Name on it. You don't remember that? I haven't seen it, and I have a feeling the FBI took that, too.

MY: Because it said, Japanese on it?

TY: Because it was Japanese --

JY: In Japanese?

TY: -- Association or Japanese Chamber of Commerce or whatever it said, I can't remember.

MY: Did it have Japanese letter?

TY: No, it was in, it was in English. Oh, I haven't seen that in a long time. Come to think of it, I wonder if they took that, too. Well, we never got it back if they did.

AI: Well, when you were at home and these FBI men show up, what was your reaction? What went through your mind?

MY: I had no idea what they were there for. But I had, we knew that they were, they came to get my dad. And we said, "I'm sorry, he's not home." But they came in anyway. And they start searching the house and I just remember wondering, "I wonder what they're looking for." I mean, "What were they looking for?"

TY: Well, I think he had pretty good idea what they were looking for, like looking for some incriminating evidence.

MY: No, but we didn't know at that time that Dad was going to get arrested. You know, we had no idea that that's what was going to, that was in the future. That that was going to happen.

TY: Yeah. Well, but it was shortly thereafter they went after Dad, so you knew that they were after him.

MY: Yeah, well, that became -- but then she, I was wondering what we were thinking at the moment, when they were doing that. And I remember wondering what in the world they were looking for.

TY: Well, knowing that they, Japan, they've gone and attacked United States, well, I sort of understood why they were doing it, but beyond that I just didn't... but why they were so thorough, they were, why were they, looked between every page of the book that we had in the library, I found that kind of puzzling, myself.

MY: And then --

TY: But of course, if you're a spy, I guess you might hide things almost anyplace, so...

MY: And the other thing is, we couldn't talk to each other.

TY: Yeah.

MY: If I said something to, they said, "Don't talk, don't talk." So we just had to sit there.

<End Segment 43> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.