Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kiyoko Morey Kaneko Interview
Narrator: Kiyoko Morey Kaneko
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Watsonville, California
Date: July 29, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-kkiyoko-01-0020

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TI: So at this point, I'm going to jump ahead a little bit to December 7, 1941. And can you describe what that day was like for you?

KK: Well, that was Sunday. And Hiro had a church in Pearl City, so he had scheduled church services in a school, rented part of the school that had church services there. There was Sunday school for the kids, and then worship service for adults. So we were preparing to go to the Sunday school. And for that strange day, I had... after changing clothes, before I put my Sunday "go to meeting" clothes on, I didn't like to eat because I'd get messy. So I had this kimono on, cotton kimono, yukata, with a red and white Japanese obi on. And while we were eating breakfast -- this was before eight o'clock -- while we were eating breakfast, this horrible noise sounded. And we thought, "Oh, the navy and army are, got together and having practice." And we heard booms and stuff like that. But then it started to, we heard machine guns going off and that kind of stuff. So we thought, "Well, how strange," you know. So we were, I opened the screen door, and was standing there looking when this Japanese plane came by. You could see the pilot's face and everything. He looked at me, and I don't know what he thought. Because here I was, wearing this Japanese kimono. So anyway, I thought, "Well, how strange." And then we turned on the radio...

TI: Well, at that moment, when you saw the plane for the first time, what did you think when you saw that was a Japanese plane with a Japanese pilot?

KK: What did I think? Well, I was bewildered. I thought, "Well, it can't be war." Because the guy was in Washington trying to negotiate a peace. And we all thought that that was going to end up in peace. But then to have this happen, "What happened here?" So it was very bewildering.

TI: So you said you turned on the radio, and what did you hear?

KK: Well, just nothing much. But all of a sudden, a man's voice came, announcement said, "A foreign country has bombarded Pearl Harbor," and then they shut it off. So there was no signal after that.

TI: And during this time, were other planes flying nearby your house?

KK: Not too close, but I understand that some did fly closer and people got strafed. But fortunately, they didn't hit any of us. Our neighbor was running around the yard with a coffee pot, and says, "Come on over and have coffee." [Laughs] Afterwards, we found all these jagged pieces of metal all over the lawn. How we ever got by without getting hit...

TI: So explain, why was your neighbor running around with a coffee pot asking for coffee when this was going on? That seems a little odd.

KK: Yeah, it is odd, never could figure out what. But she was always saying, "Come on and we'll have coffee together." But, of course, none of us were candidates for that, we were going to church.

TI: And so while this was going on, what did you do? Were you, at first you were out in the yard, but then what did you do while this was...

KK: Well, then Butch said, "If this is war, and those are bullets, if the guy was shooting around, better get into the farthest corner of the house that has this solid wall, and put the mattress up there." And then we sat down on the floor and waited for all the sounds to stop.

TI: And then after the sounds stopped, what did you do?

KK: Well, then I don't know whether they talked to each other on... I guess the, Butch called Hiro on the phone and said, they conferred together and says, oh, well, they'll just cancel the church business. "Better wait and see what happens. But if it sounds like somebody's going to come alongside, or some people are going to invade, then we better run into the cane fields 'cause they'd never find us in the cane field." So they were thinking of what the army did in Nanking.

TI: Oh, so there was this fear that the Japanese army would land in Honolulu and then, and for safety, people were thinking they would just run into the cane fields.

KK: Uh-huh. So we were getting some provisions ready to take to the cane field. We didn't know how long we would be out there. So we quickly, hurriedly picked out a few canned goods and whatever that we could survive on. And we ran in, ran over towards the cane fields. It was up on the hill. The peninsula was into the Pearl Harbor, but the cane fields were up on the hill, higher up. In the cane fields, you can't find anybody.

TI: And so were you the only ones who were doing that, or were other families doing the same thing?

KK: Well, other families were doing something, I don't know what. But we never got together except after the raids were over and there was silence all around for quite some time, and they decided, well, maybe they're not coming back. But of course they might, so they said, well, we'll go up to the assistant manager's house, which was a big stone house. And fortunately, the manager, assistant manager and his wife were on the mainland, and so the house was empty. So we went up there, stayed in that house for a while. So they said, "Well, if the planes come back, better run into the cane fields."

TI: And you stayed in the assistant manager's house because it was safer, because it was stone? Is that why you stayed there?

KK: Probably that. I didn't think too much, I just did what I was told. But there were, up there, there were mostly army wives and navy wives that had living quarters on the peninsula.

TI: And so because you were Japanese American, how did the army and navy wives treat you during this time? Was there any kind of...

KK: No, no, there was no animosity. They just took us as just another person, at least I felt that way. But they didn't really get sociable.

TI: Can you describe, though, the feelings and how people felt during this time? I'm wondering how, especially the wives, knowing that their husbands were, were down at Pearl Harbor or something, what was the mood of the people?

KK: Well, they were scared silly. Most of them were young, young wives at home with little kids. And so they, nobody went berserk or anything like that, but they tried to keep their kids close. And that's about the size of it; the kids were scared, of course, 'cause the atmosphere was so poor. And I don't know how we got through that night, but we did. You couldn't, they told us not to turn any lights on. We couldn't turn the stove on because it was a gas stove. We opened some cans of something or another, I don't know what it was, but we had a little bowl of something that we did for supper. Nobody said anything about that.

TI: During that evening, did people understand or know the devastation that had happened in Pearl Harbor, how bad it was?

KK: No, no. Everything -- nothing as far as, no details forthcoming. The radio was dead.

TI: So describe the next morning. What happened on Monday?

KK: What did happen? I think we were all so scared, we didn't know what to do. And somehow or other, the day passed. I can't remember anything much.

TI: So at what point did you start hearing about or learning about the devastation at Pearl Harbor?

KK: [Pauses] I just get a blank; I just don't know.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.