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MA: And, let's see, so he was in Sand Island then, and how did... how did, then, you end up on the mainland? So he was in Sand Island until, you told me, December.

GH: Towards the ending of the year, then my mother came home and said we have to go to the camp, and then my father would join us. If not, he would stay there in Sand Island for the duration of the war, and we would stay where we were. And so we didn't have much of a choice. She didn't want to leave him there. So most of the families opted to go. Because naturally, you can't just leave him in there. And so they gave us short notice. My mother had to dispose of a lot of things, and good thing we had relatives nearby and they took care of the place. But it was, it was not easy and there were a lot of sacrifices to make. I still remember that we had practically a new car. I guess my dad got practically a new Packard, and they sold it. Naturally everything they sell is going to be cheap, short notice, and so they sold it. So the friends benefited from that. And they had to get rid of a lot of other things that my mother accumulated.

MA: And did you know where you were going?

GH: No, we had no idea.

MA: Just, they told you just the mainland.

GH: Uh-huh, to a camp. But we had no clue, and at that time, we didn't know about the camps. Because, you see, the West Coast people were already sent over there, but we didn't know about all of that. And so when we were going, all the way we didn't know, I think. I don't think we, even on the train we knew. I'm not sure if my parents even knew.

MA: And what about your grandfather at this point? Was he...

GH: He was in Japan.

MA: He was, okay, so he was in Japan. And you had mentioned that your father and your older sister, Lillian, had visited him right before the outbreak of the war.

GH: Uh-huh. They were there for the summer, and then they heard about war, there was talk about, lot of talk about war there.

MA: In Japan?

GH: In Japan, so he wanted to come home so that he won't miss the ship coming back. And he tried, and even then, it was a struggle to get on board. So I think he had to go to the embassy to get help. And that was another thing that was on his record. They wanted to know why he was able to get the embassy to help him. They thought he had connections with the government there and all that. So anyway, he said he had to come back because my mother was ill and all the family, the children are here, he said he had to get back here. So he did everything he could to get back. So they made it on the last ship that came through. 'Cause the ship after theirs turned around, had to go back to Japan. So, oh, imagine if you couldn't make it back. And he had the business, too, he needed to run the business.

MA: And so the government knew, even, that he had visited the embassy in Japan.

GH: They had everything.

MA: So they must have been, he must have been under some sort of surveillance, even.

GH: I think when they picked him up, when he was on the list is when they had -- that was one of it, one of the reasons, I think, because he just got back. That was another suspicion, he just got back and the war was gonna start. They thought he had some connections with the war. So from there on, I think they tracked back. Amazing, the things that they found. Nothing, nothing that showed disloyalty, but they went back through so many things that he said he just can't believe how much they can trace you. And even here, I think, to get his visa and all of that, I think, where does he go? To the consul maybe. But I don't know what it was that they questioned him about that, too, how he went so -- or they looked up every trip he took, all of those things. So they questioned it, because he had so many of them.

MA: And they also froze his assets, too.

GH: They froze most of the assets at the bakery. They couldn't touch his, but the bakery because in my grandfather's name.

MA: Okay.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.