Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Marion Tsutakawa Kanemoto Interview
Narrator: Marion Tsutakawa Kanemoto
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: SeaTac, Washington and Seattle, Washington
Date: August 3 & 4, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-kmarion-01-0016

<Begin Segment 16>

AI: Well, so tell me about the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed, December 7, 1941. How did you find out about it? What, what happened that day?

MK: You could just feel the change of your parents' demeanor. They were speechless, really. They didn't say much. They really didn't say -- I think that they were trying to spare us of the concern, worry. Like, we're in trouble, we're in trouble. And like my mother had warned me that her status as treaty merchant, so now the treaty will be gone, so she kind of knew that, well, there's double trouble for her, because she's not like the majority of the Isseis. So it was the unknown, and I think they were really dumbfounded. They didn't know... yeah, but you can tell, the way they moped around, or the showing of the, the demeanor was so different. I can't express it.

AI: Did you actually hear it yourself, on the radio? Or did someone --

MK: No I didn't, I... and the thing is, the unfortunate part is, I think we only took the Sunday Times because my parents didn't read the English paper. They took, subscribed to the Japanese paper. But for the kids they subscribed to the Sunday paper, just for the comics. [Laughs] So it was through the radio, and then the filtering down of the news, the hubbub, the telephone calls.

AI: So what did you think, what was your reaction when you finally heard about this bombing?

MK: You know, the bigness of it, I mean, it just, I didn't have that impact. It just goes to prove to you how ignorant I was. Even to be scared, to see the enormity of the problem. I think I wasn't as sharp as what the current kids are these days because they have so much media coverage, and, you know, we didn't have TV, definitely, and so... I'm a visual person, so I think more so.

AI: Well, and when you were mentioning about your mother's worry about her status. Since she did not have the same immigration status --

MK: Right.

AI: -- is what you were saying.

MK: Right.

AI: Were you worried that she might possibly be deported back to Japan?

MK: My mother warned us that it might be, because there's, there will be no longer a treaty. And so, she says, "Komatta, komatta, it's a problem, it's a problem." But she didn't know. She really didn't have friends in her similar status either, so you really can't even cry on each other's shoulder. So it was kind of a strange situation.

AI: What happened the next day? It was Monday when you went back to school.

MK: When I went back to school? There was one gal, and I don't even remember whether it was a Caucasian or an Asian, but opened this newspaper up and flashed (it) in front of me a picture of one figure, and it was the (Seattle Post-Intelligencer). And we used to subscribe to the (Seattle Times). This was the (Intelligencer). And it was a picture of my dad. And after she flashed it, well then she took off. Didn't say anything. And it's haunted me and haunted me. And to this day I've never tried to even retrieve that picture. But then somewhere along the line one of our relatives, I think it was my brother Bob that got the (Seattle) paper with that one that I have. And that itself is so hurtful because, gosh, a man who is so free, and to do his thing, always smiling and so energetic, (now) he was really just so controlled by another power. I mean, like the FBI. They didn't have any uniform or badge or anything on, but you could tell my father had to take, for a change, he had to take orders from somebody else. [Laughs]

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.