<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And so how much longer after Pearl Harbor, do you know approximately the date the FBI picked up your father?

SI: I thought it was around March.

TI: So, it was, it was about the time... well, so they picked up your father, and then shortly after, people started getting information or news that they're going to be leaving Seattle. So why don't you talk about.... well, first talk about how it was different with your father gone. I mean, what happened to the family?

SI: For one thing, we were fortunate in having friends in the temple that came to help us to pack. Then I remember one gentleman that came to help us get everything together to put into the duffel bags or suitcases. I remember painting a few Ichikawa names on the suitcases. In fact, there's one suitcase that's down in Portland at the Portland Nikkei Heritage Museum that has our suitcase down there, the Ichikawa still on there. [Laughs] Yeah, but I remember helping to pack some of the stuff into the suitcases and painting names onto the suitcase and onto the duffel bags.

TI: With your, with your father gone, was the other Buddhist minister also picked up, or was he around? I think you mentioned earlier there was another...

SI: Okay, the other minister was the Reverend Terao, and he was not picked up.

TI: So why would your father be picked up and the other minister not picked up? Do you have a sense of how that worked?

SI: I really don't know, other than the fact -- I think Reverend Terao was a citizen, whereas my father was still, he became a citizen later on, but he was still a Japanese national.

TI: So Reverend Terao was a Nisei?

SI: He would be a Nisei, or Kibei.

TI: Kibei. And so, I guess, fortunately, the temple still had at least one minister there to kind of oversee things. So describe some of the activities. So as people were leaving, what happened to the temple?

SI: Well, some of the members' possessions were stored in the basement of the temple. And I don't know who was in charge of that. However, the contractor who built the temple, a Mr. Hughes, was very helpful in taking care of the building to see that things were worked out. And I think he's the one that kind of assumed responsibility for the building during the war. And we owe him a deep debt of gratitude for the assistance that he rendered us during that time.

TI: Because wasn't the temple, during the war, used, at least parts of it, by the government?

SI: The government agency took over the temple as the headquarters for the Maritime Service, the U.S. Maritime Service. And they used it to not only for the office, but also to, I guess, house some of the people that served in the department.

TI: Okay. So it sounds like, so some of the temple members stored some of their possessions in the basement, and then during the war, Mr. Hughes helped kind of oversee it, and it sounded like it was leased to the Maritime Services during the war.

SI: Yes.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.