<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Well, let's, let's talk about this. So -- and we talked about this earlier -- December 7, 1941, what can you remember about that day?

YN: The, the summer of '41, or '42?

TI: '41. So actually, December 7th, '41, the day of the bombing of Pearl Harbor. How did you hear about this?

YN: Very simple. I didn't hear any direct way, it was the concern on my mother's and father's face, and all those from the neighborhood of my parents' group. And I didn't understand. I really never understood the significance of Pearl Harbor, but there was curfew. I think that that moment of history that changed the lives of the Japanese American, I was oblivious to what was to happen.

TI: Well, and that was because of your age.

YN: My age.

TI: You were younger, but your, you said you saw the concern in your parents.

YN: Absolutely.

TI: How did things change at the store? Did people come there to talk about it, or, or especially the non-Japanese Americans, did they quit coming to the store?

YN: It changed dramatically, because from hoping to see customers without knowing they're not there or not coming, or there's a different attitude. To a child, it's a shock. One day it's normal and the next day something has to change. A child never understands -- that's why a child is so, so fragile. That's why I always use the word the "fragileness of a child," as the fragileness of freedom. It can be on a moment's notice, (the innocence) taken away.

TI: And so you were oblivious, although you just saw that your -- you said --

YN: I could only see it through my father's and mother's concern, I could see it in -- but I had no understanding that this was what it was going to lead to, 'til one day we had no store and we were on our way to "Camp Harmony," which is the Puyallup Fairgrounds, and I thought, "What a great thing. I've never been here."

TI: Well, so let's talk about those weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. So, so your customers, you said, did they quit coming to the store?

YN: Less customers came. Less customers came.

TI: Do you ever recall any of your customers saying things to your parents for being Japanese?

YN: I am certain -- I never saw it, okay -- but I am certain that my parents suddenly realized they were the enemy in the eye of the people of the community. I am certain, but you must understand our parents. I never heard a negative to their life. That's the Issei story that's lost. I want to believe that what some of the historians have said, they did what the government told them to do, for they believed that the authority was right. I don't know that.

TI: So the weeks after, so fewer customers, were your parents consciously starting to downscale the business? Or what, what, how, can you remember what happened?

YN: Yes, I can remember so many -- we, my father got a new car, and immediately all those things were of no value, because somehow, after the first of the year, and by the time Roosevelt signed the famous Executive Order 9066, which didn't mean nothing to me as a child, I'm certain my parents didn't understand any of that, either, but they must have known enough that they were no longer gonna have a business. Because why would I say that? Because no one would come to buy it.

TI: Buy the business or buy --

YN: Buy the business or the store. And, and I'm certain to this day, they must have given away everything that was there. How they knew all these things, I wish I could document. We failed in a lot of our knowledge. I'm certain there are stories, but I don't have my own story.

TI: And so one day you would come back, and the store was, was closed?

YN: We're gonna be leaving, and then we had our, what we can carry, and we're going to Puyallup to be interned before we were moved to Minidoka. But the, as a child, I only remember the things that fascinated me. I had never been inside the fairgrounds, and I was one of the lucky kids; I was inside the fairgrounds.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.