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BH: Let's go back, then, to Pearl Harbor. And can you tell me about any memories of that day?

KH: We lived downstairs of the apartment house on Terry Avenue, and a fellow, one of the tenants upstairs, he came down and said that war was declared, and he says, "Turn your radio on." And we turned the radio on, and it was kind of a shock for us to know that Pearl Harbor was bombed, and to see it actually happen, because we knew something was going to happen. My mother was visited by one of the Japanese bank managers, and he came to say goodbye. He says, "I have been called back to Japan," and he said, "there might be possibility of a war." This is back in, must have been around September, October. And so we didn't know what was going to happen, but there was feeling of war then.

KH: So when Pearl Harbor, when you did find out that the United States had been attacked by Japan, what did you think about that?

KH: It was kind of hard to believe, a small country like Japan. You, it seemed like, "How did they expect to conquer the United States?" [Laughs] But we, we took it in stride, and then I know that when they asked for volunteers to do things like for the American Red Cross, I know that's where I learned how to knit. I knitted sweaters, and then my mother, she made bathrobes for the veterans who were in the hospitals. I remember she made, sending, sewing and send these, maybe a stack of six of them. Mrs. Nakamura would come by and pick 'em up. And let me see, what else? Then we started hearing rumors, and we had curfew, and I remember going out on dates and having to come back before the curfew started so that the fellows can get home in time, too. It's just a feeling of unrest, because we had to get ready to go to camp, too, and still run the apartment.

BH: So you were informed that you would be...

KH: Evacuated.

BH: Evacuated.

KH: Uh-huh. But we were fortunate, because my sister Hiroko was working for the Japanese American Post, which was run by Jimmy Sakamoto and his wife. And apparently, they had an army soldier just in the office, and we were told that we were allowed only two suitcases apiece, for each person, and to go out and buy two suitcases for each person, and then they said that, "You're going to have a community mess hall, and you have to have, bring your own dishes, utensils, to eat out of." And I remember my mother buying aluminum plates for us. And you know, after we got to camp, to hold those aluminum plates after they're stacked with hot food, it's too hot and you can't manage it. But when we got to camp, the situation was different; we did have army mess dishes.

BH: So...

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.