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TI: And then, so when the war, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, what happened to your grandparents and your mother?

JO: My grandfather was, he went to work on December 8, 1941. He was the general manager of a, I think it was called the North American Textile Company, it was a Japanese-owned trading, trading firm, import/export firm in San Francisco. And he, I think, was called into the office to work the next day, or maybe he just went of his own because it was a Monday, I'm not sure. And he, and he never, he didn't come home from work that day. And he, I think the FBI was arresting maybe directors of companies, of Japanese companies, and I think another man who was really higher up than my grandfather, I don't know if they called him in to take this man's place because they knew that someone, someone would be arrested, but I'm not sure. But I do remember hearing a story about how this other man fled, I think, somewhere, and that he was a gambler. I can't remember more than that. I almost remember his name. But in any case, my, my grandfather reported to work, and he, and he was arrested there. And I don't think my grandmother knew for a few days what had happened to him. Maybe somebody from the company called her, I'm not really sure what went on.

TI: Now, did you ever get a chance to talk to your grandparents on your mother's side about, about this, this period?

JO: No, well, my grandfather died when I was eight, so... but we later, in the late eighties found a stash of letters that he had written to his wife during the war years from the camps where he was to the camp where she was, and they were shoved into the fireplace. And we found them on the day that we were moving my grandmother out of her house in Berkeley where she'd lived for at least sixty years and into, into a housing complex for the elderly. And in the fireplace, my aunt and uncle, I think, were cleaning it out, and they found my grandmother's wedding veil, a pair of white silk gloves, a piece of wedding cake that I think she'd kept in the freezer for sixty years, and then this box of letters which no one had ever seen. And then, so we took them out of the fireplace, I think she wanted to burn all of these things. And so that, what I'm saying is I know a little bit more about my grandfather and who he was and what he'd gone through during the war because of those letters, but not because I'd ever learned anything from him directly, because he died when I was so young. And my grandmother, by the time I started...

TI: Before, I mean, going back to those letters, this is really interesting. When you read those, what, was there anything that, that surprised you or stood out as you...

JO: Actually, the one thing that, that stands out in my mind is that he said, "Oh, how wonderful that Haruko won the, the tap dancing contest." And I just, I, I mean, I can't picture my mother as being a tap dancer, especially in the middle of the desert, but they had, they had talent shows, right, in the camps. But my mother has always just sort of passed herself off as being just sort of a klutzy kid and -- I think it was tap dancing, I should go back and look at the letters, but it was something completely unexpected. And most of the details are very weather-related, because you know how Japanese always start letters with a description of the weather, which I didn't know until I started doing research, but now I understand why, whenever I talk to my father, he's always like, "How's the weather?" And I at first thought, "Why does he always ask -- " it's just so boring to talk about the weather, but then I realized it's a very Japanese thing to ask about the weather first, so all of his letters talk about the weather in Santa Fe or Fort Sam Houston, or Lordsburg, New Mexico. Those were the three camps where he was kept. And at first he was in Missoula, Montana, so the weather there, of course, was very cold, and then once he went to Texas and New Mexico it was very hot. But they were all censored, so there was a lot that he couldn't say in those letters.

TI: When you say "censored," what, how did you know that these letters were censored?

JO: I actually didn't ever see any blacked-out areas, but I know that many people who did send letters, that parts of it were blacked out. But I remember my grandmother making the snipping motion with her fingers and laughing, so I think a lot, some of the letters which I didn't see, the ones that were cut up, I guess maybe she didn't save them, some of them were just cut to shreds and were unreadable. But I know as a rule, all mail, all detainee mail -- actually, they were considered prisoners of war, the men who were arrested by the FBI -- were censored by the government and I think they weren't allowed to mention place names and they couldn't reveal too much. So the letters are pretty... they're not terribly interesting. Oh, another thing that was interesting was that he still had to pay taxes, so he would give my grandmother instructions about a lot of bank, banking instructions about what to do. And then there was a discussion about whether or not to go back to Japan, and that was -- my grandfather wanted to go back. He thought that there was no future for them in America, and that the only way that they could remain together as a family would be to request repatriation to Japan. My grandmother refused to go, and so my grandmother, remember, is in the camp with the two kids and she's separated from her husband, and she said no, she wanted to stay in America.

TI: Now, how did you know that? Was that through a later conversation?

JO: No, it was actually mentioned in the letters, so -- which sort of surprises me, because you might not want to let on to the censors that you wanted to leave, although if he had to fill out an official form I guess it'd be public information anyway. And I remember him saying to her in the letter, "You think very carefully about your choice and don't discuss it with anyone. It's your decision and your decision alone." And afterwards, he abided by her decision, so she, she did not at all want to go back to Japan. And I think also her family relations were very, I think they had cut her off completely when she stayed in America, so she was sort of disinherited or disowned. So there's a lot of anger on her part towards her family; I think she did not want to see them again.

TI: That's interesting.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.