<Begin Segment 18>

MK: And then we were told to come and see him. So, my mom didn't drive so we took the bus, and three of us kids followed my mom. We went to the immigration office, and through, behind the bars, we visited him. Well, he was getting ready to be sent off to Montana.

AI: Did you know that at the time?

MK: No, no. We didn't know where he was gonna go. Then, well, my father, being the clever one, he slipped, through the bars, a piece of paper, oh, one-sixteenth of even this sheet, real small piece, wadded and crumbled and he kinda passed it to my mom. And I guess she told him in Japanese, but I didn't hear her so I don't know. But he very discretely passed this paper on to my mom and then we bid our goodbye. And I thought we were gonna see him again, or he may come back, but it didn't seem like -- well so, my mother has another kind of a hurried, rushed, and she clung on to my younger brothers and we took the bus home and we went home, she opened the door and she quickly went behind the bookcase. It was a, well, he had the Okayama ledger. And, and she quickly took that out. Well, the FBI looked behind the bookcase, but they missed it, (...) or the bookshelf that was leaning on this side. The ledger being that it was so much longer than the other books, why he had tucked in there. Without even looking at it I remember my mother quickly took it down to the basement and burned it up. And she told me that if they found this they would probably find other names to big donors, I guess, and they will get 'em into trouble. So, I remember she didn't even look at it, she just quickly burned it, burned it up. And I thought, "Well, this is strange." And that's all she said, that if they -- and I didn't think the kenjinkai was any, they did spy work or sabotage. I mean, they were help, actually, you know. The kenjinkai was a helping group. But anyway, I remember that's what they did.

And later on when the peace came, I remember my father was kind of blamed for taking off with the Okayama money, Okayama Kenjinkai money. But wherever it was deposited... everything in my father's name was taken, put into the alien property custodian fund. So, he was... and then, for his business, he never had a personal account. Everything was charged to the business, even our shoes and our socks that I remember. And same with the car, they told us it was mise no car, meaning that it belongs to the store, or my father's car, the sedan, was the store. And he didn't have a personal account because all the money was always recycled into the business. And so, I found out, when you're stripped of everything, I think it was, that was so devastating. So yeah, it was... it's vivid. I mean, certain things are so vivid.

AI: What, about the ledger, so at that time, your father was the treasurer for the Okayama Kenjinkai.

MK: Right.

AI: And as you mentioned, it was a service organization, it was --

MK: Right.

AI: -- a club of people who all came from that same area.

MK: Right, we would help them and... uh-huh.

AI: Right, and so the ledger probably had, recorded the donations that people gave --

MK: Exactly.

AI: -- as charity to help other people in the club, or to, for the club activities. But he must have been very fearful about what could happen to people who were listed as donors.

MK: Right, right. So, well after, I mean, after my mother went through the process, I said, "What is it?" And she told me, "We have to destroy this because the ones who donated so much money, we would get them -- if we, if they look at this they'll get, they'll get into the same problem Dad, Otosan,was in." So then I understood why she had to do this. And without really explaining it, after the fact, then she, we would say, "Well, what was all this about?" And she would explain it, and well, you can understand. But then, later on, I heard that oh, well, Tsutakawa, the reputation of the Tsutakawa again. Tsutakawa took off with the Okayama money. But he had no way of returning it because everything that was in my father's possession, well, he was stripped. And it, from what I understand I think it was only about two thousand dollars. But in those days, I guess it was sizeable. So, we have to accept it, that it was. But there was that mention... it hurt me so much because I couldn't imagine my father doing something that wrong. But he, there would be people who was curious, thinking he took off with it, you know. But anything that belonged to him, it was stripped.

AI: Everything was confiscated?

MK: Every bit. Because insurances he took out on me for the education fund, like I mentioned, small print, when I became twenty-one I would get two thousand dollars. My father called it the education fund, but he was alive, in Japan, because I had come back and he was still in Japan. So, because he was alive, well, the New York Life had to send it to the alien property custodian. So I, this is why I lost another big source of money to go to school.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.