<Begin Segment 10>

DN: Do you, you probably remember December 7, '41 pretty closely, pretty well.

EH: [Laughs] Do I.

DN: Yeah. Can you tell me about it?

EH: You know, Mom had hired a carpenter to redo our living room, and it changed the windows around. And that Sunday morning, I was out on, up on a scaffolding. I was probably about eight feet in the air, and I had the radio out there. And I'm prime coating the windows -- or the fascia boards on the window. And "The Japanese have bombed Pearl Harbor." I almost fell off the, the deal, and I disconnected the radio, went in, and plugged it in the house, and all of us sat there and listened to all, about Pearl Harbor. And we were shocked. I mean, utterly shocked. But that still didn't change anything with, with any of us on our friends, you know, the Japanese friends.

DN: Did you connect it to your friends at all?

EH: Well, we'd always talk to each other, you know. 'Cause it wasn't very long after that, let's see... when did they take them out?

DN: Late March.

EH: March, yeah, because we had a, a deal at Eagledale on the day they took 'em away. And I was one of the guest speakers. See, December, that was in '41, and they left February or March.

DN: It was March 30th.

EH: March 30th, okay, yeah. But in between there, life went on as usual. And then when they announced that they were gonna take 'em away, I think the, they gave 'em ten days to pack up their stuff, one suitcase per person was all they could take. And those poor people had to get rid of -- a lot of the people had to get rid of all their stuff. I know, I think it was Sam Nakao, was talkin' about, they had just bought a new refrigerator and a new stove. What are you gonna do with it? Give it away, penny on a dollar? Or give it away? And, and like the Nakatas had the store, well, that was Momoichi and Johnny, they had the store there in Winslow Way, Eagle Hardware & Market, which was a meat market, and I think Marshall Realty took care of the place for them. They just shut it down, and closed it up and held it for 'em 'til they got back.

DN: But a lot of the homes, these were leased homes in some cases, right?

EH: Yeah. Well, okay, I think we said, mentioned the Hayashidas. Boy... that was the one out in Port Madison, I know that they saved all of their stuff, even their old truck, and they parked it right there, and they had, well, most all of 'em, they didn't have tractors, they had horses. And you know, I don't know what they did with all the horses.

DN: The, well, the Nisei in Bellevue, who went through some similar experience, described how "vultures" descended on them to basically pick them clean.

EH: Oh, yeah.

DN: People come in to take advantage of their situation.

EH: Penny on a dollar. Put it that way, 'cause it was, lot of 'em lost a lot of money. And, you know, in later years, when they got the $20,000, you know, after they had -- well, this was just a few years ago that they got that. I heard some rebuttal on that, and I told 'em, I says, "Did you ever grow up with 'em? Did you ever know any of 'em?" "No." I says, "Don't make statements like that. Like I says, "If you had to leave your home and everything in it, or get rid of it right now, what would you do?" I says, "That was the situation that a lot of them were in." And...

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.