<Begin Segment 47>
AI: But before that point, though, you kind of finished out the year of 1941. He was still in Seattle at Immigration. The end of 1941 happened, and as I understand the history, there weren't too many immediate --
MY: Transfers?
AI: Right, but, and also, you didn't have immediate restrictions yet, such as curfew or travel. I think that curfew and travel came just a little bit later. But what do you recall of changes or shifts in your life after your father had been taken, but you were still in Seattle?
MY: Uh-huh. Well, the one dramatic change in our situation was that we didn't have any money. My --
TY: They froze all Dad's assets at that point, December 7th. Right at the point, from day 1, they froze all his assets so we didn't -- his savings and what have you.
MY: He had no cash.
TY: He had no cash.
MY: And Tosh remembers that we found the safe that was in my closet. I knew the safe was there. It was somehow -- what did we get, did we get a safe-cracker to open that safe?
TY: No, I think Mother got the combination from Dad.
MY: Oh, oh I see. So anyway we got into the safe, and we found a thousand dollar in cash.
TY: No, the safe was in May's closet, bedroom closet. And the safe was really inside the closet, in the back. And she had her hang, clothes hanging. So apparently the FBI just completely missed it. And, and then I think Mother got the combination, she used to go visit Dad periodically at the immigration office, and she got the combination from him then, she came home and she, I think I opened it. I, with the combination, I think. We opened it and found, luckily we found some money in the safe. And we lived on that for --
MY: Several months.
TY: -- for a while.
JY: A thousand bucks was a lot of money at that time.
TY: At that time it was a lot of money.
JY: That should have lasted you --
MY: Several months.
JY: -- for half a year, you know? That's a lot of money.
MY: No, that depends -- no because, I remember a couple of -- let's see. I was, I didn't go to school after December 7th.
TY: Oh, I dropped school, too.
MY: We all dropped out of school. And I, and then Mom thought that I should go to work. So I got that job working for that photographer --
TY: That photographer, yeah.
MY: As a babysitter, I think. And so I came home, and our mail was piling up on Dad's desk. By that time it was all empty, because the FBI took everything. So we piled our -- my Mom was not opening the mail. She just piled it up on the desk. And so one day I came home and I thought, we better open that mail and see what's in the mail. So I start opening the mail, and I found all these bills. And then there were some bills -- it must have been couple months later, because it said "Second Notice," for the gas bill, and electric bill and telephone bill.
TY: How come I didn't open the mail? I didn't even, I didn't look at the mail, either.
MY: I don't know. Yeah, I know. Well it was just sitting there, you didn't open it. And so I thought, well I better open the mail and see what's going on. And so I opened it, and I remember the utter astonishment that my -- I said, well, my father, who took care of all those things... there was a gas bill and an electric bill, and the water bill, and it just, it was the first time I had ever seen a bill. I mean, it was the first time I just realized that we had to pay for the electricity. [Laughs] Or the water. As far as I was concerned, you just turn the faucet on and the water comes out, and turn the light on, the light comes on. So, and then I said to Mom, "They're going to turn off our electricity if we don't pay this bill." Because they had sent several bills, and we didn't respond, right? And so then we, then that was when we got together and we were trying to figure out how we were going to pay those bills. Because it had accumulated for a couple months by that time. And, and then somebody, maybe you or Mike, remembered that we had a bank account, the school bank account.
TY: Yeah, school bank account. That we paid 25 cents a week.
MY: Ever since first grade, we were taking 25 cents every week on bank pay. Some kind of ritual that we had. So all three of us were putting 25 cents every day -- every week. And so we had several hundred dollars accumulated. And we looked at the bills, and we thought well, maybe we could, we better get -- so we got the money out from the bank, and I think we took the cash to the Seattle, water company.
TY: Yeah, I think we did.
MY: To the light-, what was it called, the Seattle Water and Light, something. Anyway, we took the, I didn't even know how to write a check, much less, I didn't know there was such a thing.
TY: Yeah, we were oddly ignorant about things like that.
MY: My dad, Dad took care of everything. So anyway, we paid our electric bill and so forth. So that was the part of it that was just very shocking to me. That, that we didn't know these things. We were just totally ignorant of our daily living expenses. Really strange. And then we were, my mother, Mom was talking about that period, and she said that when Dad had his first hearing...
TY: Had what?
MY: He had his first hearing --
TY: Yeah, oh yeah.
MY: -- at the immigration department, she said that they wanted her to come, but she didn't speak English. And so she said she had Machida Sensei --
TY: The minister for the Methodist church.
MY: -- the minister for the Methodist church go, and then we asked her years later, when she was talking about this, "How come one of us didn't go?" You know, you were what? Nineteen? I was eighteen. And she said, "Mada kodomo ga chiisai kara," you know. "Because my kids are so chiisai," meaning, she meant, not small, but young. "Kodomo ga chiisai kara." And she asked Machida Sensei to go to represent the family. And we both thought that was weird. [Laughs] How come one of us, we spoke fluent English, how come we didn't go? But it kind of shows the attitude the Isseis had toward the kids, showed, too, that they kept us rather young...
TY: A real sheltered life.
JY: Naive and innocent.
MY: Uh-huh, yeah.
<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.