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TI: So I guess next I want to go to when you were about fourteen years old, and this is about when the war started.

PY: Uh-huh.

TI: And I wanted to ask you, what memories do you have or how did you find out that the war had started?

PY: Well, you know, I think I was a middle school, second grade, I think, when the war started. I heard that war at, we were forced to go to one sports area. The government, they called it Hiroshima Grounds, and they used to have all kind of sand bringing in and make it flat and have a sports ground. And not only from my middle school, but so many other middle school, all the students came to help. And at that place, I heard the announcement that the war started.

TI: And so when they assembled all the students, was it like a big field that you were, or a flat field?

PY: Yeah, big field. The government was making the big field, sports field, for the Hiroshima city. And all the middle school students participated to make the field.

TI: And so you were all, like, lined up in rows?

PY: Yeah, yeah.

TI: And so how did they make the announcement? What did they say?

PY: I think first they had a music, and then after that they announced that war happened in Hawaii, they attacked the Pearl Harbor, this and that.

TI: And what was the reaction of the people assembled there, all the...

PY: Well, we weren't too much concerned because we were little boys, you know. And I guess I don't think we felt any, anything.

TI: Well, how did you feel? Because this was, you'd lived in Hawaii and you knew that your, that Ralph lived in Hawaii.

PY: By then, I was really a Japanese, not a Hawaii-born Japanese, but I was a Japan Japanese. Because we were all Tojo doctrine, I think, yeah. We were what you call forced to believe in Japan Japanese. And that's how, I was one of the student like that, too.

TI: Okay. Because you had been there now almost eight years, I think, or more than eight years.

PY: Yeah.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.