<Begin Segment 4>

AI: Were, after, after Pearl Harbor was bombed, did you get any harassment, or did any, did any people threaten you or call you names?

JY: No. I wasn't scared, 'cause I was born here, so that's the reason I was hitchhiking two o'clock in the morning.

AI: Now, when did that happen? When were you hitchhiking?

JY: December 18th. See, my, my mother's cousin was in Fresno then. And, and her husband was a mechanic, and he had a garage there. Well, he had friends that had orchards, so he could give me a job working in the orchard, pruning grapes, 'cause it was December. So I'll, figure I'll go there, 'cause didn't have enough job in the farm right then, so, but they didn't want me to take the family car, and they want me to stay on the farm, so... I wanted to make my own, I want to help out, so I started hitchhiking. I sneaked out of the house two o'clock in the morning, I was hitchhiking. That's when I got picked up.

AI: What happened when you got picked up?

JY: I was put in jail and (instead of) frisking me, they told me to take all my clothes off, and I was (...) naked and they're laughing. Five big cops, all bigger than me, all around me, and they (said they're going to) beat the shit out of me, and laughing. And chief of police walked in, he stopped it, and he had them bring me into his office and he apologized. And then I was wondering what's going on, and he explained to me, his father went through the same discrimination (in World War I). He said he's a second-generation German. But still, he held me in jail for five days. But I didn't know that. (...) You could hold (...) a person only seventy-two hours. Unless you charge him for something, you can't hold him after seventy-two hours. But after five, five days, they let me go. And I went home, and nothing (I) could do, so I worked on the farm until we got put in camp.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.