<Begin Segment 12>

MA: Going back a little bit to your, after your wedding, how did, how did that affect, I mean, you'd just gotten married, and how did this event, Pearl Harbor, and then the FBI coming in, how did that affect you and your husband in the following weeks?

SO: Oh, I don't, I don't think it affected us too much. He didn't seem to worry very much, I don't know. [Laughs] I didn't seem to worry, I guess I didn't, we didn't know too much about it.

MA: Did you go on a honeymoon?

SO: No, we couldn't, he was going to take me down to California, but, so we went to the Davenport Hotel for one night. [Laughs] That was our honeymoon. They told us not to go out of town, so we had to obey the orders there.

MA: Was that the FBI?

SO: Yes, uh-huh, they said better not go down, better stay in town.

MA: Do you remember some of the other effects of Pearl Harbor, like maybe how the curfew affected you, or how maybe segregation of restaurants that you witnessed?

SO: Uh-huh, well, I remember, I remember the Chinese had signs on their clothes saying, "I am, I am not Japanese, I am Chinese." That was the one thing that was kind of irritating. And then I remember I went to Newberry's Store one time, and I was going to get some bobby pins or something and the girl there, there wasn't anybody else that she was waiting on, and she turned around to me and says, "What do you want?" And I says, "Oh, I just want some of those safety pins," and she wasn't very nice to me. But other than that, I, I didn't wander out too much, so I didn't, I wasn't mistreated or anything. But I don't know about the menfolks. I don't, I don't remember very much about discrimination, I don't remember very much of that. I remember that the Chinese had their signs saying, "I am not Japanese," though.

MA: What was the relationship like between the Japanese and Chinese before the war?

SO: There was not too much communication, I don't believe. Maybe downtown where they had the tailor shop and the laundry and things, I think there were some Chinese people living down there and they might have been, but I know, I don't remember any discrimination.

MA: It seems like, so they would wear the signs or the buttons that said, "I am Chinese."

SO: Yeah, uh-huh.

MA: What was the reaction of you and your friends, or maybe people in the community --

SO: Oh, when you saw that?

MA: Yeah.

SO: I actually didn't see any of that, I heard about it. So I wouldn't know... I thought that was kind of bad, but I never did see anyone wearing it. That's what I heard, that there were some Chinese people that were doing that.

MA: What did, what were you and your husband doing during the war? What were your jobs?

SO: During, well, my children were real small, so I was home taking care of them. My husband was working for the produce company, and he was getting vegetables from the gardens that were close by and bringing them into, into the produce company, and then sending them to the stores. But that was real close to the, our apartment where we were living, too.

MA: Oh, where was your apartment?

SO: Right across the street from the armory.

MA: So you were living by the hotel that, that his folks were running?

SO: Uh-huh, yes. Yeah, that's right. And then so after the war started, there were, there were quite a few people that were interned that came to Spokane and started farming, and I think most of them were farmers, but they came and most of them stayed quite a while. Some of them moved back to Seattle.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.