<Begin Segment 7>

TI: So about this time when you were in nursery school, there's the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

EBA: Yes.

TI: Do you recall at all the news about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

EBA: I don't recall the news, but... and I don't know who the Japanese, or the Issei pastor was at that time, but after that news broke, he came to our house in tears and apologized to us for the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Other than that, I don't have any recollection of news flashes or radio reports or anything like that.

TI: So who was the Issei pastor, do you remember?

EBA: You know, to be honest, I can't remember. I'd have to go back and look at some of the records. I don't know if it was Reverend Okazaki, maybe, I'm not sure.

TI: But this was on December 7th, he came?

EBA: Yes.

TI: And so he came and apologized to your father and mother, or the whole family?

EBA: To my father and mother, yeah.

TI: And what, when you saw that, what did you think? I mean, do you remember anything?

EBA: What does a young boy think at that age? I, I don't know. It's just a... I'm not, to be honest, I'm not sure what I thought at that time. But it's, to go back and think about what that must like, it must've been a very puzzling time. Here's this man who is in tears, which is unusual itself, because, you know, men don't cry. And, but, he was very apologetic about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. And then a couple days later, my sister, Arleen, answered a knock on the door and two FBI men were there, standing at the door. And they were there to... they wanted to talk to my father. And we were immediately under suspicion as being sympathetic to the Japanese and that we might be subversive in some way.

TI: And how did that feel for the family? Did you have a sense of that?

EBA: I'm not sure it really dawned on us really what we're, what this prefigured or what this foreshadowed for us as a family in the short time after that. Certainly it was... I'm sure there was some anger in that because we know, we knew the Japanese. We knew these were our friends and just as there were differences between the Nazis and the Germans, there were differences between the Japanese in Japan and the Japanese in the United States. So it was probably a time of caution and wondering, "Okay, what's gonna happen now?" You know, looking at the unknown.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.