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MA: And then when you returned back to Hawaii shortly thereafter, I think Pearl Harbor happened.

LN: That's right.

MA: And what are your memories of that day?

LN: Well, I tell you, even at that, I was so naive. We were very naive. Not like today's eleven years, thirteen years old. Yeah, I must have been about thirteen. You wouldn't know it, I mean, we were just so dense, you know? We were more frightened from what everyone around you is talking about. "This is war," and whatever, that kind of thing. But I think the very thing that we remembered was that some of our neighbors were non-Japanese. So they started to, they had some hostile feelings coming out because of that. Because it's like the Japanese are attacking, you know, and that kind of thing. So it was pretty traumatic. But after a while, when things settled down more, it became, it wasn't as bad.

MA: What about, like, the martial law? The Hawaiian government declared martial law. Do you remember the blackouts and the things that they implemented?

LN: That's right. Things were so funny, when you think about it, they had blackouts and stuff, and we would have all the windows sealed so that... and we would have a little light. All that, I mean, gosh, when it really comes down to it, it was just a lot of whatyoucall for nothing. Because they couldn't even... I mean, if there's a plane overhead, they wouldn't notice just one little, one little light coming out of a house, a big house or whatever. But anyway, for a while it was, yeah, very traumatizing to think that, oh, boy, there's gonna be an air raid at any time and all that. But as you know, nothing happened in Hawaii since then. So things got a little bit more lax. In fact, after a while, it became almost normal. [Laughs] Except we were young, so we were still going carefree. But then we didn't notice a lot of things, but like servicemen started to be transferred to Hawaii, right, from the mainland. The white population. So sailors and the army, military people. So the whole culture was different during the war because of the war.

MA: Yeah, I imagine the influx of the white servicemen really changed a lot of the dynamics on the islands.

LN: Uh-huh, I think so. I think so. I still remember where the... see, in Hawaii, the native indigenous people, Hawaiians, they had a very, very sad tragedy that happened. The white servicemen, this is way before the war, the white servicemen lynched a Hawaiian boy. Because, see, the white people had this thing about "colored" people, right? And so the Hawaiians were, as far as they're concerned, they were "colored." So they did that to this one boy. And of course, the Hawaiians, native Hawaiians, all the Hawaiians never forgot that. So when the servicemen came, they were transferred and the military became bigger in Hawaii. Oh, there was so much trouble. The Hawaiians, every time they got a hold of them, they would beat them up. It was like life or death for them to go out on passes and all that. It was very bad because of that, that whole tragedy that happened before.

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