<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, let me ask you more about that day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. What do you recall?

MH: Oh, I recall that very vividly. (...) The choir was practicing after church and we were working on this Messiah very diligently because it was a difficult music, and the young people were just swallowing it up. (...) We were really going gung ho. And one of the members who was late came running in, and shouted, "Pearl Harbor has been bombed." And everybody kind of looked at him and says, "He's a latecomer. Now, come on in, let's get started. We haven't time to..." "If you don't believe me, come on out and listen to..." A couple of the men went out and heard it on his car radio and came running back. "It's true." And, of course, that just dispersed the whole group. They all ran home. And I came home wondering, "Now, what's going to happen next?" So that's our vivid picture of the Pearl Harbor day. And, of course, we didn't know what was going to happen.

I came home and checked on my parents and... and the thing that was very interesting was that about the middle of the afternoon, my mother and dad's good American friend from way up in the university came to call on them to assure them that they were still friends in spite of... and I thought that was such a wonderful extension of their friendship. No longer that they were gone, FBIs were at our door, picked up my dad and took him away. And we did not see him for, I think, six or seven months (...). They were all picked up and put into the immigration station. And among the group that were four Niseis. I think Tom Masuda and Kenji Ito and two others. And they realized the mistake that they made, because these were citizens, you see. So they were taken out of the immigration and put into a jail. But they had a trial for each one of them, and they were all acquitted because there was not enough evidence. So that's the story there. But the others, (...) internees, they were taken elsewhere and they finally ended up in Missoula, Montana, and -- until their hearing. And about six or seven months later, my dad's hearing came up. My brother went to (hearing), and they found not enough evidence, so he was released. By that time we were in camp. (...) My mother, who was living in Pullman, Washington, came into camp so that he could join (her). So that's how they got into camp, and we were already in camp. And, of course, soon after that we left to come to Chicago. So that's the story of our internment days.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.