<Begin Segment 16>

MA: Going back to Pearl Harbor and all of that, what were your parents' reactions when they heard?

GY: Oh, they were, they were afraid. I think they, it was all instantaneous. Soon as they knew Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, they just were afraid. Ostracized, part of it, I'm sure, job discrimination, I'm sure, name-calling, whatever you might think of that was discriminatory against Japanese took place in their own mind. And possibly took place in your work, too.

MA: Do you think the Isseis were maybe more fearful because of their, they weren't, they couldn't become citizens, and they had uncertain...

GY: I'm sure, yeah, that was part of it. I think we even had name-calling back then. Oh, what's the word, quisling. Quisling was used in German. Quisling would, France was noted for quisling, they were spies, so to speak, saboteurs. And a lot of that was going on, "You show your patriotism, you're in America now," and that kind of thing. We didn't have any spies, but I guess we had name-calling among the Japanese itself, even. You got to do right, if you're going to live in this community, you have to do right.

MA: What did -- sorry, what did they mean by that, doing right?

GY: American, being American. Don't speak Nihongo, Japanese, out in public. We had a lot of pictures particularly in judo, with Japanese flags. And we had to cut out the Japanese flag because if the FBI came, and they did in some respect, to our house, and you had a picture of Japanese flag, good lord. You were ostracized or pulled into jail. It never happened, at least for us, but we could see that it would create problems. You don't want to create problems for yourself by that display of a Japanese flag, even with American flag. So we just cut it out, threw it away.

MA: Do you remember the FBI presence in your community and around Spokane?

GY: Oh yeah, oh yes. Yeah, one couple here in town married on December 7th.

MA: The Sumi Okamoto...

GY: Okamoto, you bet. And they were delayed, they were delayed for a long while at their own wedding. Doors locked, or they couldn't get out or whatever. My folks went, but, at least that's the story that came back.

MA: What happened at that wedding in terms of the FBI? Did they actually arrest people that night?

GY: I thought I heard a couple of Isseis were taken away. I'm not sure if it was at that wedding, but I, I thought they were taken away, whisked away. You never saw them for a couple years after that, they were whisked away so fast. Mr. Kosai and...

MA: Was it Hirata?

GY: Mr. Hirata, yeah.

MA: After these two men were arrested, did that set off another sense of fear or anxiety that...

GY: I'm sure it did, I'm sure it did. Everything was, you know, concentration camp for the Isseis, the relocation center, in reality, it was a concentration camp, however, the language of those days for the Niseis and Isseis was "relocation centers." And oh yeah, even, we were afraid, we kept on hearing stories about Spokane was on the evacuation list also, and the story at that time yet wasn't about the cutoff would be the Columbia River, Wenatchee area, somewhere in that, Columbia River. But all we heard was the bad thing, Spokane will be evacuated. Therefore, we bought, oh, two suitcases made in Japanese straw. It's a soft cover, male-female like affair, where you put it over the other to tie it up. You put your clothing in there. We bought two of those, started putting our luggage away, and then a lot of the stuff we gave to the FBI. FBI confiscated our cameras, our guns -- we didn't have any guns at that point, but they confiscated a lot of the, a lot of the stuff, and as I remember, when I was in the military in Alabama, I asked for my camera back. I had to go through the FBI. And lo and behold, FBI went to whatever place it was and got my camera and sent it to me in Fort McClelland, Alabama.

MA: Did the FBI confiscate these things, did they go door to door?

GY: Oh yes, oh yeah. Yeah, they confiscated every bit of it, cameras, so you don't take pictures of "sensitive areas," and I think it was binoculars, guns and cameras, primarily.

MA: How did your, your parents' hotel business do during the war years? I mean, was there a big change?

GY: Well, not really. So many of the hotels downtown were owned by Japanese. No Chinese, but primarily Japanese, and these transients that came through, gee whiz, if there were haiseki, if there were, if they were any, even... what do you call it? What am I trying to... but anyway, they, if they wanted to stay at a hotel which were all owned by Japanese, and there was all these various hotels that they wanted to stay at, they had to cater to the Japanese to get a room for that one night or whatever. So there was no, we didn't encounter any difficulty in people staying at our hotel. It might be that actually business picked up with the WPA, CCC still staying there. Lot of them went into the military, however.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.