<Begin Segment 22>

AI: Well, today is May 13, 2004, and we're continuing our interview with Elaine Ishikawa Hayes. And, Elaine, as we were just mentioning yesterday, that you had finished talking a little bit about what happened December 7, 1941, and some of the reactions of some of the people around you. And what happened later on in December as the month continued on? What kinds of reactions were you getting, and what... how did that change your behavior and your feeling?

EH: Well, it... I think it was significant. It didn't seem to me that our neighbors, for instance, were very communicative, and I didn't have... we had the four or five Japanese neighbors on the four corners, but there were... there was a Mexican family, and I had a black classmate right -- Leona Henderson -- next door, and then there were Portuguese and, and other European background people. And nobody said very much to us. But we were also very preoccupied. And I was living closer to college, so my mother was always telling me, "Get on the bus and get home." And if I was late, she, she was visioning all kinds of things. That people would be attacking, and if you're caught alone you're vulnerable and that kind of thing.

AI: When she... excuse me. When your mother mentioned her fears and, about possibly physical violence.

EH: Uh-huh.

AI: What did you think? Did you, were you also worried that could happen?

EH: No, I... you know, and I think maybe it's typical eighteen-, nineteen-year-old, and maybe it's my personality. I don't, I don't hold... I just have more confidence. People ask about, "How do you feel about the country? Did you think U.S. was going to dump you or ship you back to Japan?" And I don't know whether I expressed that, but I, I personally felt that I just had confidence in, in the country that after all this blows over, we'll be back. We'll be able to come back to normalcy. But that Christmas was uncomfortable or, or it wasn't the usual Christmas. We debated, Christmas was one time when you got new clothes or... so it was an iffy situation. I think I went ahead and made, made myself a dress. [Laughs] And typically in my family, because my mother was working, by the time we were in high school and, and out, holidays always meant that we would make a dress for one of the two younger sisters, Martha and I. And I don't know what we did about Jean. She must have gotten her share of clothes. And I'm not sure how much sewing we did. And, and so Christmas was kind of a busy time if we're going to make clothes for five, five of us. But --

AI: And why was that, do you think, that you decided maybe you weren't going to make all the clothes as usual?

EH: Well, because, because of the war. You didn't know how depressed or how much you should change your life pattern. Traditionally in ethnic Protestant churches, there's always a Christmas program that everybody practices for for weeks ahead of time and it's produced. And I don't really remember that we had a Christmas program like that, the traditional, that year. I do remember my... a couple of my friends saying, "Gee, I, I didn't think we should be dressing up for Christmas this year," or something like that. And so it was a more solemn Christmas...

AI: Do you remember -- excuse me. Do you remember other discussions with some of your church friends at that time about, around Christmas time or New Year's, about what might be happening to you as Japanese Americans now that the U.S. was in the war?

EH: There was a little bit of that. As the evacuation issue came more alive, we really didn't know where we were going. My mother, I think, gave each of us ten dollars and said, "Okay, you have to go buy your own things that you're going to need, but be sure and get a pair of jeans." Well, we had never, we never wore jeans. Almost... I think at that time, I think, I don't think we wore pants even. And I just refused to spend that precious ten dollars on a pair of jeans. I went out and bought some yardage of kind of a contemporary print, modern print of pink and white, a very coarse, stiff -- it wasn't cotton, but I knew that material was going to last long, and I knew this might be the last dress I ever will be able to make for myself. So... and when that kind of thing happened, my mother didn't go in a tirade, she just let us live with the consequences. And so she silent, she silently watched me make my dress and I got it. She also, I think, gave us some money for luggage, and I forget... one of us, either Martha or I got some "Samson" luggage, which was kind of a luxury. It probably was Martha, because she always was going to go for quality, and if she doesn't have anything else, she's got this one purse. And, and by golly, that "Samson" luggage, Samsonite luggage really lasted. But it was a, it was a busy time.

I remember my mother coming home once and saying, "I'm going to substitute. I'm going to go take care of the Reverend's kids so Mrs. Nakamura could go shopping." Because Reverend was... I'm sure all the ministers were very busy going around to all the parishioners, particularly rural area people who were isolated and, and couldn't get to places. So ministers' wives sometimes with young children are going to be in a desperate situation because, unless somebody offers to baby-sit.

AI: Oh, excuse me. I think I remember you saying in an earlier conversation we had, that you had a kind of upsetting experience on New Year's Eve, that you had some social plans for... to go out, and that, that your mother was --

EH: That was, that was not Pearl Harbor era. I graduated, I graduated in, in... well, it was my senior year's New Years Eve.

AI: Oh, I see.

EH: So it was the year before Pearl Harbor.

AI: I see.

EH: (Yes), that was, that was the issue about the culture conflict.

AI: Oh, so that incident didn't happen in 1941, but it was something that you wrote about.

EH: It maybe was... it was in the old church, and we, that new church got dedicated in the spring of '41. So it was, it was apparently New Year's Eve of '40.

AI: And, and then you ended up writing about that in your class, and that was that year, then, in 1941 or early '42 that you wrote?

EH: When I... (yes), that's right. I was a freshman and was taking Psych 101, and the unit was "conflict." And I just considered this a conflict and I wrote about it. And I didn't even know if there was a term called "culture conflict," but I labeled it that because that was the only thing I could figure, that the conflict was really about culture. And by the time I wrote it, it was three or four... let's see. That was my senior year, so it was that fall, and six or eight months, nine months later, ten months later. So it had kind of simmered down, but it stayed with me enough that I chose that subject. And...

AI: So here you were, lots going on, but you're still going to your classes at Sacramento Junior College?

EH: Yes, I guess wrote that probably two or three months before Pearl Harbor.

AI: Well, maybe this would be a --

EH: That's why --

AI: -- this would be --

EH: -- that's why the same Psych prof, in talking about connecting with evacuation, he in the rush of things, he keeps that paper, and then when he comes to visit camp he asks if he could keep the paper.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.