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MA: So you said that your father was taken away by the FBI, you didn't know what happened to him. Can you talk about that time when your father was gone, and did you end up finding out where he was?

YK: Oh, yeah. I mean, soon as I called my mother and she came home, she called a lawyer and asked him to find out where they may have taken him. And in a day or two, I think the lawyer called back and said he found out that my father was taken to the federal prison in Terminal Island. And so then my mother, my mother asked the lawyer if she could visit him, and so to find out where he is and all that. And in a few days, I think... my mother could drive, and so after she found out, she did drive over to Terminal Island because she needed to give my father medicine and stuff. And I heard afterwards that, one of my brothers said, "You know, they wouldn't let Mom give the medicine to Pop?" You know, stuff like that. So I knew that Pop was not being treated well at all. And six weeks later, they let him come home. And we were a little shocked he was so changed. First, he was, he had lost a lot of weight, he looked so thin. And I don't know why, he couldn't seem to talk. And because he couldn't talk, we didn't know if he could hear or see. You know, if he can't answer, then could he see and hear? And almost, only the next day, he died. And so it was quite a shock to our family, to our mother and all.

And then we were told that if anybody comes to the funeral, they're gonna be checked out. So then we said, "Gee, we better tell people not to come to the funeral." But the Japanese people were very nice. They said, "Oh, no, we're not doing anything wrong to go to a funeral." So our Japanese friends were not afraid, and they did come to the funeral. The FBI were right there, as they walked in, they checked. But, I mean, the funeral went off, and then we went to, we found out that we couldn't bury our father in the... there's a beautiful cemetery in San Pedro, but they said, "No blacks, Latinos" -- meaning Mexicans -- "or Asians" -- meaning Chinese and Japanese -- "could be buried in San Pedro." So my family had to find a cemetery where Asians could be buried. And most all the Asians were buried in Evergreen near, in Los Angeles. And slowly, I think we were -- we kids, I mean -- when the war broke out, I think I was nineteen or twenty. So my twin brother and I were the same age, and my brother was two and a half years older. But we were slowly starting to see that there was racism and stuff. Of course, in school, you don't talk about those things. The teachers don't want to bring things like that up. And then I guess at home, the parents, I don't know, maybe they don't want to bring it up. And since all our classmates are so nice, we didn't want to say anything to them about it.

MA: It seems like Pearl Harbor and then the removal of Japanese Americans really brought to the surface a lot of things that had been going on maybe underneath or unspoken for a long time?

YK: Oh, yeah, yeah. It did bring it up to the surface.

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