<Begin Segment 6>

TI: So, I'm curious; the next day, when you went to work back on Terminal Island and into a, a place where there were a lot of Japanese, I mean, were you apprehensive about, about crossing that bridge to Terminal Island?

DK: I don't remember that. Of course, we were carpooling and I was riding with, six of us riding in our car, and no, the only thing I can remember is the urgency to get, get some ships ready, 'cause we'd lost a lot of 'em.

TI: Did you have any sense of the change in the Terminal Island community, the Japanese community when you were driving through? Did you have any, was it any different than before?

DK: Not that I could see. 'Course, they had a complete Japanese town. They had a bank and stores and everything the Japanese needed there, and we didn't mingle with that; I mean, we went right through it but we didn't... just went to your parking lot and then from there you went to work.

TI: Well, in those, in those days and weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, were there any interactions between the Japanese community and the workers, the shipyard workers?

DK: Well, on December the 14th, which you don't find much written about this -- and the news media in my view, the news media was really wise at the time. I was working in a double-bottom of a destroyer, which, welding, and it's not very accessible. You crawl in and you crawl out with asbestos clothes on, and there was a blackout near the end of my shift. And blackout or power outage as far as I was concerned; there was no lights and no power to weld. So I lay there for a while thinking, well, it'll be back on. But there was a lot of activity above me and then pretty quick I didn't hear any. So I backed out of there which is 30 feet in a, in a very cramped position to get out to where I could get on deck, and there was nobody around. And it was a blackout, there was no lights, and so I immediately tried to, as quick as I could, get to the parking lot. And when I got to the parking lot, all of the tires of the gentlemen that was driving that day were all slit with razorblades, and lots more of them.

TI: So lots more cars?

DK: Most of 'em.

TI: Not just one car, but multiple cars.

DK: Oh, hundreds of cars, and the only thing was some planes was circling L.A. at the time, and they were quite high, and Fort MacArthur was firing at 'em, and they went out of sight, it was over Long Beach at the time, and they went in a circle and they went over all the defense plants. And while sitting there, we seen two large searchlight-type lights giving some kind of a code to these planes over us. And they made a circle and started making a second circle around, and there was more lights showing up different places in south L.A., we could see from there. And it looked like, like dot and dash type messages being sent to these planes. And one of the planes got hit with these guns from Fort MacArthur had come down in South L.A. Well, we couldn't move because the drawbridge, the army from Fort MacArthur was on the island and picking up Japanese people, and they wouldn't let us off 'til they got it all cleared like they wanted it, then they let us off. By morning, me and my roommate went to see where this plane went down, we could see it go down but didn't know where it was at, of course. And by morning it was completely cleared and you couldn't tell where it even was. Still, the newspapers and the radio didn't say anything about it. Because by morning, getting, trying to get to there, the streets were so crowded with people leaving the West Coast, there was no way that any army reinforcements could come from outside of, outside of L.A. area because of the traffic leaving L.A.

TI: So, so let me sort of recap some of this. So, so this was on the evening of December 14th, so a week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

DK: Right, right.

TI: While you were at the shipyard, not only were hundreds of cars, their tires slashed with razor blades, but then you saw circling planes. I guess one question, was your sense those were Japanese planes?

DK: Yes.

TI: Is that, is that kind of...

DK: Yes, I mean, I'm sure that if they didn't drop anything, so the talk amongst the people at that time was that they were trying to find out where the defense plants was, because none of 'em had blackouts, curtains to -- especially welding is so noticeable from a great distance, so I didn't, after the fourteenth, they told us on the fifteenth that we'd be laid off for a week or so 'til they got blackout screens put up.

TI: And as part of that, you said one plane was shot out of the sky and crashed in South L.A., but you weren't able to, to find that. I guess one question -- and you mentioned this earlier -- how you thought, well, one, the media didn't cover this, and you thought that was a wise thing. Was that part of the, to discourage panic, I guess? Because you were saying how people were streaming out of Los Angeles.

DK: Yes.

TI: Is that what you were thinking?

DK: Right. I mean, they, the other planes immediately turned and went back out to sea, so they quit firing. And then on Sunday, or on Monday the fifteenth -- that was on a Sunday -- I went back to see about going to work. I was working the night, from twelve to twelve. And they were loading several buses of Japanese on Terminal Island on buses, and the word was they were going to Tule Lake, California. And some of the things I've read say that was one of the camps.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.