<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Well, I'm curious, so the, after December 7th, when you went back out into the, the larger --

HS: Larger community, yeah.

TI: -- community like school and things like that, were there any comments or reactions from other people about --

HS: I was in grade seven at the time. I can't remember much about what they, people said to me about it. Because we were, at that time, I was in grade seven, and a lot of the kids just, although they knew I was different, never expressed to me that the difference meant that I was the enemy at that time. They didn't say anything to me, from what I remember. That was Christmastime, and we were still going to school. And in fact, that year, these same things went on the school. I still remember our high school teacher was a, the principal of the high school, or the, we were in grade seven, so it was junior high, but it, junior high at that time was called Booth Memorial High School, and it included seven to twelve. So on that week, about... so we were going to school, just continued on, nothing happened at school, we were still there. And at, just before Christmas, he would go, the principal, Mr. O'Neil, would go from class to class, and I still remember this happening, and it was kind of a tradition at that time that Mr. O'Neil would go from class to class and greet the kids to wish 'em Merry Christmas. The other thing he would do, his, his forte at that time was the poem called Lady of the Lake. Now, Lady of the Lake was written by, I think it was (Walter Scott). And Lady of the Lake, he would, he would go there and he would say to the class, say, "Okay, somebody give me, somebody give me a line from Lady of the Lake." And we'd all be sitting there, open the book, look at, and then somebody would shout out one line, and he would pick it up from there and continue on. That was, the fact that he memorized Lady of the Lake, which is a poem that goes on for how many pages, I don't know. That was, he, he prided himself on the fact that he knew that poem inside and out, so that you could give him one cue, and he would go, continue on. That happened that winter, that was that December.

Well, things got probably -- I don't remember so much after that, but in, by January, especially after that Hong Kong had fallen, Hong Kong fell in November 24th -- December 24th. Day, either day before Christmas or Christmas Day. And when that happened, that really -- and there was a lot of Canadian solders that were sent there to try to defend Hong Kong. And so it became big news in terms of Canadians, and it reflected on us. And at that, from that point on, I think there was more, I think we would call haiseki, you know, people looking at you and saying that, "You Japs are enemy," sort of idea. And in fact, within a month of that time, so that would be January, by the end of January, there were things in the paper about getting rid of the enemy, like they say, "the enemy within us." And that was that, started to come out.

TI: And how did this affect -- especially after the fall of Hong Kong -- how did this affect your family's business? Was there a change?

HS: Well, family business, it continued on. We seemed to be going reasonably well. I don't know how many, my papa would have been more, I didn't talk to him a lot about how, how they affected the business, but the main thing that happened was the fact that when this guy pointed out that there was an advertisement in the newspaper which was, went on for a number of days, saying that the New Dominion Cafe was for sale. And anybody interested sort of thing, apply. And Papa... and I said, "Oh, that couldn't be." But then this guy brought out the newspaper and said, "Here it says that your, that the New Dominion Cafe is for sale." So I thought, gee, and I asked my dad, and he says, you know, "Don't worry about that. It's none of your business." So that's the last I heard about that. Eventually, I heard that he rented the restaurant, and in fact, he rented it to the Gurevichs, and told them to run it.

TI: Because he wasn't able, in that time period, to sell it?

HS: No, he wasn't able to sell it.

TI: So you're saying that after, especially after the fall of Hong Kong, you started seeing things like the --

HS: More, it was more, it became more -- see, before that, there still, people still had an idea that things would be straightened out, it'll all be. The war was in Europe, not in the Pacific.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.