<Begin Segment 58>

AI: Did you have a feeling that you had to really put away anything Japanese that, especially after that FBI visit, and them taking all the Japanese writings, your father's writings, and that type of thing. Some other families had mentioned to me that they really felt that they were trying to get rid of, and kind of wash away or put away anything having to do with anything Japanese.

MY: Like the short-, the thing is, the fact is, they took everything of that sort.

TY: So anything that they left we thought it probably won't matter, they won't be incriminating, anyway. So I don't recall --

MY: They had boxes of stuff from the house. I mean, they took books --

TY: Yeah, they took several boxes.

MY: -- my dad had stacks of mag-, you know how you collect magazines from one month to the other and you don't throw them -- so they took all those magazines, and, and so we had, we literally had very little left, of that type. But they wouldn't, they were, very meticulously went through the house. And they looked behind picture frames to see if there were any -- and Dad and Mom were saying, "They were looking behind the pic-, what did they think they would find there?" They maybe thought that there would be a hidden safe or something on the wall. But that was probably years later, the people were hiding, safes, in the movies, they had safe in the wall. Because my mother was saying, "They were taking pictures off the wall, and looking in the back of the pictures, as if we would be hiding something between the frame and the" --

TY: Well, you see 'em, in the spy movies, doing that. [Laughs]

MY: Yeah, I know. One of those FBI agents read a lot of spy movies, saw a lot of spy movies, I suppose. But because of that, I think we didn't really have very much left --

JY: To worry about.

MY: Yeah, that looked like it may be incriminating. So with, for some families who heard that some of the houses were ransacked by the FBI, I imagine that they went through their things and got rid of lot of their Japanese things, just in case the FBI came to --

JY: Well, we didn't have time, or you guys didn't have time, anyway, 'cause they got there so fast.

MY: Well, we had no idea that that's what we were supposed to do, at that point.

TY: Well, we didn't even have time to think, because the FBI was there within a couple hours.

JY: Yeah. [Laughs]

TY: They didn't give us much time.

MY: Yeah. So, to answer your question, no, I don't remem-, I do remember my mom had some scrolls. I imagine that they were quite old. I still have a few of those, but some of those are stored. But she --

JY: 'Cause I think each of us have a scroll.

TY: Yeah, a scroll.

MY: Scroll, that --

JY: Are they from prewar days?

MY: Yeah.

TY: Yeah, they're all from, most of them are.

JY: So they must have been stored by the Bonhams or somebody.

MY: Yeah, yeah. But when the FBI came, I don't know where they were.

JY: They didn't mess with those, yeah.

MY: I don't know where they were, because there are quite a number of them.

TY: Yeah, quite a few.

MY: Because --

TY: We got several, several, we got several each, between us and Mike, so she must have had a lot.

MY: The fact is that they went through everything of Dad's things very scrupulously. But somehow they missed those, and then whatever they didn't miss, Mom burned them, a lot of things. And we still have a few. And some of those scrolls had Japanese characters.

JY: We have more than a few. I probably have three or four.

TY: Oh, each of us has several, actually.

JY: Yeah, each of us have several.

TY: Yeah, I have a lot of --

MY: Did Mom pick those up in Japan, after the war, when she went to Japan?

TY: I have no idea. Some of them look fairly new.

MY: Yeah.

TY: A few of them I have are very, look very old.

MY: So, so there weren't probably very many in that batch that we have today that was still intact in there, because the FBI took whatever...

JY: Did they, maybe they thought the scrolls were like art pieces, and so they didn't bother...

MY: It could be. Because I remember Mom, you know, the scrolls, how they have a kind of a dowel on the bottom and the top, where it's rolled up. And Mom opening it up and just throwing the thing in the fire. And so, and they probably had a lot of Japanese characters on them.

TY: Could be.

MY: And --

Jeni Y: Do you remember your emotions around throwing things in the fireplace?

MY: No, we were kind of busy. [Laughs] We thought, we'd better hurry up and get rid of these things. "Oh, the FBI missed these," and so you just thought, better hurry up and get rid of them. But there weren't very many of them. I mean, it just constituted one evening of activity. Getting rid of them. But Alice was asking about other books and things like that, and I don't remember -- there weren't any, anymore. So that... but then we had to, to pack a lot of things, and I don't know -- I can't imagine the accumulation of twenty-some years of household stuff. But the things that were stored in the co-work-, my dad's, Grandpa's co-workers' houses, were obviously things that my mother treasured. So they weren't just everyday things. We did, probably burned a lot of old junk and mail, and junk and things like that that we collected. And a lot of the stuff that we got rid of had to do with school papers and I think, high school. We do have a few high school annuals, though, from our high school annuals.

TY: Yeah. Well, I kept those.

MY: Yeah, I don't think I have any --

TY: That got lost in the shuffle in Chicago.

MY: Yeah. But a lot of those things, you still have, the amount of personal items that you, you save.

TY: I wonder, where did we have those stored? Annuals and stuff.

MY: I don't know. Somebody's house?

TY: Because we, I still had 'em after the war, and you still had the, in fact, I have yours, now.

MY: My annuals, yeah.

TY: So we, we had it stored by somebody, someplace.

MY: And I had a whole case of doll, I had a doll collection.

TY: Yeah.

MY: That, and then every time somebody came from some, different parts of the world, I'd, that little doll collection. And then it had the, the Hinamatsuri, Emperor, Empress --

TY: You still have 'em?

MY: No. That, we burned that, too. That was one of the things that they didn't take. The Emperor and the Empress -- you know, they had the --

TY: Oh yeah, for the doll festival?

MY: -- March 3rd? Or is it May 5th? March 3rd, I think, is the Girls' Day, right?

TY: Yeah.

MY: And you have this, these little dolls, Emperor and Empress, and all these little things. I just have few, I don't have the Emperor and Empress, 'cause I think we burned that. That was something we thought we should -- but I do have the, the little drawers. You know those lacquer drawers?

TY: Oh yeah, yeah.

MY: I still have those. And that was stored. But then, most of that doll collection was --

TY: That's right. You did have a real extensive collection.

MY: Yeah, and then Mr. Somebody, one of the guys who used to live with us --

JY: Abe?

MY: The handyman?

JY: Abe?

MY: No, Mr. Shoji-san?

TY: Shoji-san, yeah.

MY: Shoji-san. He made a cabinet for me, with a glass case.

TY: Oh.

MY: With a glass, drawers. Because it was all over the, my room. So Mom had him make this thing, so we put all the dolls in there.

TY: Yeah, I think that --

MY: And that was all gone. And I don't know what happened to the case, but, to the shelf, but... and when I come to think of it, when Alice was asking that, I think, yeah, that's right. They didn't really look at those dolls. They just thought they were decorative things, and Mom looked at the Emperor and Empress, "Oh God, we got to throw that, get rid of that, quickly." [Laughs] And the rest of it, I just have a few -- remember those little, that little, on your seventieth birthday, I gave you that little geta?

JY: Uh-huh.

MY: That you chewed on when you were three years old? And I kept that.

JY: Yeah.

MY: You had the little teeth marks on it. [Laughs]

<End Segment 58> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.