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MA: So I wanted to jump ahead a little bit and talk about your memories of Pearl Harbor, December 7, 1941, that day that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Can you tell me about your memories of that day, hearing the news about that?

YK: Oh, yeah. I guess that's a day that none of us will forget. But anyway, I was teaching Sunday school, and I was driving a car then. Well, as I was going down to the church, it was a Presbyterian church not that far away, but I saw something that I'd never seen before. I see all these soldiers, sailors, I guess merchant marine or whatever they were, they were all hitchhiking towards San Pedro. San Pedro has a military base, I mean, has a fort. And I see all these guys when I hit Pacific Avenue, main drag, these people hitchhiking. I'd never seen this happen before. I didn't know anything was happening in Pearl Harbor, but I saw a classmate also hitchhiking, so I called him and I said, "Hey, come on over. Can I give you a ride?" And when he got in the car, I said, "What's happening? I've never seen this before." And he said, "You probably didn't listen to the radio this morning." He said, "The Japanese are bombing Pearl Harbor, and they're asking all American servicemen to go to their bases." Said, "Those of us in this area, we were all supposed to report to Fort MacArthur. So I took him there, I was sort of shocked. I thought, "Gee, gosh."

And then I went on to my Sunday school class. The kids I had were about thirteen, fourteen years or so. They happened to be all white, because our area was white. And suddenly, for the first time, I felt something different. And I felt, too, that my own Sunday school class looked at me differently. All the time before, I think they just saw me as a Sunday school teacher, nothing about my background being Japanese. But that morning, they did look at me. They probably knew that Pearl Harbor was being bombed. And, well, the Sunday school kids plus myself, we felt sort of funny. We never felt this way before. But even the kids said, "Oh, let's make this short today," and I said, "Yeah, that's a good idea." And then always I used to have all the kids, seven or eight of the kids jump in the car and I'd take each one home. But they knew Pearl Harbor was happening, and I heard from that friend of mine.

So as soon as I took them home, three tall white men were at my door, and my father had just come home from the hospital the day before. And when I opened the door to the white men who were knocking on the door, they asked if a Mr. Nakahara lived there. I said, "Oh, yeah, but he just came home from the hospital, and he's sleeping in the back." Well, these three guys walked in -- I didn't know what they were 'til later, but it was the FBI identification. And they didn't say anything, they just went in the house, went into the back, woke up my father and said, "Put on your bathrobe and slippers," I guess. And they took him away just like that. And so I called my mother, I was the only one home then, and she was just down the street at my aunt's. And I said, "Mom, come home quick. Some guys, some white men came and they took Pop somewhere, I don't know where, and they didn't tell me anything." And so she came home. And I think probably this was happening to a lot of other Japanese, and so we were calling each other up saying, "Did anyone come to your house yet?" Some of the people said yes, some said no, but they said they all had heard over the radio that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. So we said, "Oh my god, I'll bet we're all going to be in trouble, 'cause we're Japanese, and people won't think of us as being American even if we are."

And so, well, so December 7th, I mean, is a date we won't forget either. But of course, to America, it's a date they'll never forget. I mean, President Roosevelt announced that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, and then DeWitt came on -- DeWitt was the General for the Western Command -- and said, "The only good Jap is a dead Jap," and all that kind of thing. And then public officials would say, "We've got to get the Japs out of here," and, "We can't trust them," and this stuff about, what is it? "The slip of a lip will... something a ship." That quotation. "Slip of a lip will something a ship, sink a ship," or something like that. So anyway, the Japanese Americans from December 7th, we all wondered, "What's gonna happen to us?"

MA: Do you think that was, you mentioned being in Sunday school and feeling like there was suddenly this new feeling, like there was this tension that wasn't there before.

YK: Yeah.

MA: Was that the first time you'd really thought about --

YK: Yeah, I don't think --

MA: -- discrimination or your race or ethnicity consciously?

YK: I don't think so. I mean, even from the time from kindergarten, grammar school, and then junior high school and high school... I mean, San Pedro seemed like a wonderful place. But you know, I knew very little at that time. So there were a lot of things that probably were there, but I didn't see it. Because I feel even Japanese were racist, I guess, because they looked down on Mexicans. And there weren't many blacks. If there were, I used to wonder how they would look on blacks if they looked down on Mexicans. And it seemed like the poorer the person, you know, Americans just sort of looked down on them. And yet, in school, things seemed all right. One thing I do try to give credit for, I think the teachers were pretty good.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.