<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Now, in those days following the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the FBI was picking up some of the community leaders. Now, were you aware of things like that happening?

MN: Yes, we heard, I guess my brother must have heard. And so we took all of my mother's books on music, all the text that was all written in Japanese on rice paper, beautiful songbooks that she had for her students. We made a bonfire and burned them all, because it was all written in Japanese, in calligraphy, beautiful books. And to this day, it shattered me, because it's gone, of my mother's things. But we did keep her instruments, that had nothing to do with it.

TI: And going back to the burning of those books and documents, because I've heard from others that there were rumors going around that those, you weren't supposed to have those kind of things. But I've heard that more in terms of the Isseis being concerned, because they were Japanese nationals. But in your case, you were all Nisei, or U.S. citizens.

MN: Uh-huh.

TI: So you still had those same concerns?

MN: Yes. We thought having books written in Japanese might be subversive. So we, that's what my brother did, just gathered them all and threw them all, bonfire, backyard. I remember that; I could still see it.

TI: And then tell me what happened next. After you burned these Japanese things, the books and documents, what are some other things that you did during these weeks before leaving for Manzanar?

MN: When we got the notice that we had to leave, my brother took things like my mother's instruments and my musical instruments and the cameras and whatever else we thought was valuable, we took it to the Japanese school to keep for us during the war. That's what a lot of people did, put their better furnitures and things like that in there. And during that time, we understand, a lot of the caretakers let a lot of people come in and loot it. So we never, we didn't get our camera, we didn't get some of our things that we had put away in there, it was gone. But my sister got her furniture back, but my sister was already married. But some of the things of my mother's, I don't know what it was, but my brother said it was gone. But I remember taking them.

TI: How about her musical instruments?

MN: The shamisen was still there, and then the platform type thing that you put in front, like an easel type thing that they put their songbook on, that was all stored, and that was not taken. But things like they could make money from, like, the camera and things like that, that was gone. And in camp, when people were taking lessons among themselves, the teachers, one of the teachers... one of the students wanted the dai that my mother had used for her students. And so my brother sent for it, had it brought into Manzanar, and he bought it, I don't know for what, for a song. So that was not in our hands anymore, this one man bought it. So that was this beautiful lacquered easel, two of them, it was a set. And I don't know what happened to that, but it was something that I wish we hadn't gotten rid of.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.