<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Okay. So let's switch gears a little bit here. I now want to, we got you up to, you're kind of in your teenage years, and I want to go to the date December 7, 1941, the date that Japan, the Japan military bombed Pearl Harbor. Do you recall where you were?

TO: Oh, yes, distinctly. I distinctly remember that day because we had a neighbor farming that, in the chicken, raise chicken. And he'd give us all the chicken manure, and Dad would give him vegetables and stuff in trade. At that time, we went up to the chicken farm and loaded our truck up and brought it back to the farm. I was spreading chicken manure at that particular point, and my sister came down and she said, "Japan bombed Pearl Harbor." And I had this feeling that, "Well, that's certainly not going to be good for us," I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was or what, what the ramifications involved, but I had this real ominous feeling that something bad was going to happen to us. That's all I could distinctly remember. The good part of it, I never had to spread any more chicken manure. [Laughs] Anyway, we went into the, after I had finished hauling the chicken manure I went in the house and, of course, Mom and Dad would explain to them what was happening on the radio, trying to tell them what was going on. That's about all I remember. And...

TI: Do you recall any reaction from your father or mother in terms of words they said?

TO: I don't know, I don't recall my father and mother saying anything about it. They were just, just curious what took place.

TI: And what about your older sisters, do you recall her saying anything?

TO: She was helping me explain to my folks what the radio was saying, and that was about all.

TI: Well, then outside the family, when you went to school or, what reaction did you get from others?

TO: Yeah, interesting, I was going to Kent junior high school at that time. And there was a lot of Japanese kids that were from the Kent area. And so I don't recall any acts of discrimination from my classmates, or, for that matter, even our neighbors. All our neighbors, of course, Caucasians except for the Oyama family, but I don't recall that many. But they were so far away anyway, maybe the closest was maybe a half mile away. But I don't recall any, any acts of discrimination at all at that time. But we still had vegetables to sell because of the winter crops, you know, turnips and things. My dad, we took to the Pike Place Market, nobody would buy from him, so it was shortly after that that we just quit going to the Market. And I distinctly remember that my dad said, "Well, we won't prepare for any crops because it didn't..." well, you know, as time went on, of course, you kept hearing about evacuation. So my father wasn't prepared to do any farming at all. Of course, he didn't own the land or anything, so it wasn't much use. What happened was, you know, of course, because of that, because of not being able to go to Pike Place Market, we had no money, we had no income. And Dad, he was pretty much restricted because Isseis. There was a farmer down in Marysville, Maryhill, Washington, I don't remember the name of the farmer, Japanese farmer, right down the Columbia River. And he was looking for some farm labor. So me and a family friend of mine, Kaz Murakami, we went down there. I was in school, I just quit school, left school because we needed the money. And I went down there, I think we had to get special permits to go down there and travel. We went down there and worked on their farm for a while, until I think we had to evacuate. And for some reason, because of being on the Columbia River, I think because the water temperature kind of, stabilizing the temperature, the crops came out real, real early. So this was probably in, probably in March that we were down there. There was a whole bunch of us Japanese down there working on that farm.

TI: And so actually harvesting the crops?

TO: Yeah.

TI: Because that was early. Because most of the farms up here never were able to harvest.

TO: That's right. Yeah, that's about March, April. I don't recall, and I don't... it appears that they owned that farm, but I don't know if they ever went back. I don't remember the name of the people, the farmer, but they seemed to be, had been doing very, very well. They had a nice house, I think they had a daughter that had a piano that she played, that we heard. We never, we never got into the house because they had this bunkhouse for farm laborers.

TI: But it was a Japanese family that...

TO: Yes, Japanese.

TI: And what was the name, do you recall?

TO: I'm sorry, I don't recall.

TI: And this was where? On the Columbia --

TO: Maryhill, Maryhill. Just somewhere around where that... I drove down there once to see if I can find that farm, I never could. But there's a museum there, the Maryhill Museum, somewhere in that area. All I remember is the Maryhill, Washington. And I don't know how we got there. I remember we got in the bus, and I assume that we went to the closest bus, bus station. They must have picked us up, farmers must have picked us up and took us to the farm.

TI: That's interesting. I'm going to have to look into that, I'm curious now about this place.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.