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CQ: But anyway, I knew something was going on, but I never, it never added up to me. Like when all the searchlights were on when we came home, and we came home before the curfew one evening. And the FBI had all, like three searchlights just going all around from our property. And I don't know why they were going up, but they were.

MA: Had they ransacked your house?

CQ: Yeah. They had ransacked this man's house next to us, who worked for my dad, and he was from Japan, and our house, and they turned everything upside down. They took all the drawers out, they lifted, they just turned all the mattresses over, they just, it was, everything was in chaos. And they took my oldest sister's -- and she was married, of course, and living with her husband -- they had taken her sword. It was a fake sword, because she was in Japanese dance, she took Japanese dance. There's another, there's another thing besides kabuki, another kind of theater. And so we had a Japanese flag and a Japanese sword, and fans and things that she had in a box that she used for her theater arts. And they confiscated those, and my middle sister, who was in high school at that time, said, "These are my sister's and they're her props for her dancing, the Japanese dance and theater." But they took those, and I guess they looked enough like props that we weren't suspect. But the man next door they took immediately. He only was able to get his clothes and a toothbrush. And they took him because they found pictures of him in Japanese army uniforms, and they had found a shortwave radio and something, you know, things like that. So they took him. And so I knew something was going on, and then, but you know, I still thought we were just moving, we were just moving. We had goodbyes with the neighbors and everything.

MA: So you weren't aware that it was, what it meant, I guess?

CQ: I didn't know really what it meant, but I knew something was going on and something was sort of, tension for the adults. And, but you know like at school we'd play "Kill the Nazis, Kill the Japs." And I played the same games with them, and I didn't think anything of it. And obviously they didn't either because, you know, it was just teams of whatever we were doing. It was just like any other little game you play in the third grade at recess. And so finally when the day came that we were -- well, I knew something was going on 'cause we were packing everything and putting everything into the garage. And my dad and my brothers took the two cars, and they took all the wheels off and they stacked them on, someplace in the garage, one of the shelves, and then they put the cars on blocks. And so I knew that we were gonna be gone for a while. I mean, I was still aware of all these things, but I never asked questions because they always thought I was urusai, you know, always in the way. They never liked me to ask any questions. I think that was the way people were raised, I don't know. But as far as I was concerned, they just treated me like, "You don't have to know any of this."

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.