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MA: Well, how many children did she have?

JH: There were four of us, four sisters.

MA: And are you the oldest?

JH: Yes, I'm the oldest, because my older sister was in a car accident at age, about two months, almost three months. They didn't have, you know, those car seats or safety things, she was older than I. Had she lived, she'd be seventy-five. But she injured her head terribly, and the only doctor that did neurosurgery happened to be in Kona at the time. He just went around the whole island and take care of people. So she just was, she was blind, and she was very much crippled. One arm was like this, and she would crawl like this, she would bump off like this, I remember that. So when we were in camp, we had to put her in this place called Waimanu Home, which I visited during my student nurse days. And I said, "I can't believe this is where she was."

MA: So you had to leave your sister there...

JH: We had to leave her there.

MA: ...while you went to camp.

JH: Yeah, because my father was taken first, the first week in February of '42. And my mother was told, later on in that year, "If you want to see your husband again, you have to go to camp." So like the people on the West Coast, we had three days only, and she was trying to -- we were in a brand new house. So she didn't know what to do, and finally decided she'd better sell it. Because my dad never said, "Go see our lawyer." So she sold everything in there, except for her tansu. There's a beautiful Japanese one, that I think my relatives kept, for a thousand dollars. So it was really sad that we were gonna leave.

MA: And then, so your mother was sort of forced to leave your older sister.

JH: Yeah, in Waimanu Home. So what had happened was we were picked up, I think, in December of '42, then we were taken to Sand Island in the Pearl Harbor region on Oahu. We stayed there for a week, and that was when my mother went to see my sister for the very last time. Then, later, we were shipped up on the Lurline, which was the cruise ship at the time, painted all black, though. And then landed in San Francisco, and they crammed us into the ferryboat, and I mean crammed. All the kids had to just, we were just squeezed in there. And then when we got to Oakland, they put us on a train. So my first boat ride, my first train ride. And my mother was lucky; we got a Pullman. So I know I slept on the top, and my mother and my two sisters slept on the bottom.

MA: So, and then when did your sister end up passing away? Was that during the war?

JH: I'm trying to remember. July 22, 1944, I think. She was ten.

MA: And do you know what happened to her?

JH: Oh, well, in a simple word, murder. They just, she was blind, she was incapable of taking care of herself. And in those days, I guess, people weren't as humane as they are now to the developmentally disabled. So they left her in a tub to drown, and she did. My cousin, my mother's niece, was working at the Hilo Memorial Hospital in admissions when this person that worked at Waimanu Home came, and I guess they were exchanging stories. Then she rushed back to see my father and told my father, "There's a nurse that told us that Taeko" -- my sister, that whole thing I just told you about drowning. The next day she went over, that person was gone. So he decided not to pursue it, because this was ten years after her death. So, you know, it's hard without money to pursue that. Yeah, that was sad. I would have loved her to be normal and have a big sister, you know. So I adopted a big sister. She also was in camp.

MA: Well, yeah, and especially the war sort of breaking apart your family like that, with your father gone and your sister then having to be in this place.

JH: Yeah, and my youngest one was two months old, so it made it harder for my mother. But the thing that I found was so wonderful was when we finally reached Denson -- that's what they called it then. That grape vine is something. They found out that there was a two-month-old baby on the train. So by the time we got, we were put into those army, we called them busses, in a truck. So they took us to our block, and we were about the last ones to get off. And the women were all at the bottom of this ladder for us to go down, they wanted my sister. 'Cause I remember their arms were outstretched, "Give me the baby, give me the baby." Which was really wonderful for my mother, 'cause we landed late. And I found out later that I think they didn't want the locals to really know that there were internment camps, concentration camps there, so most all of us debarked at midnight.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.