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TI: Okay, so we were talking about December 7, 1941, and then you were saying about Tom, and so what was going on?

MY: Well, he had just, he had his shovel, you know. It was still pitchfork and shovel days, you know, and he was out there, he had bought a piece of property kind of kitty-corner from the folks' house. And so he and his friends had dug out a formation for the basement of the house, and that was December the 7th, the morning of December the 7th. And then at noon, everybody got this thing about, oh, war's starting this and that. So then Tom picked up his shovel and went home. And so he never did get it built. So that hole in the ground sat there and then somebody would say, "Well, some hakujin remarked about that," so for kids, because, "What if a kid fell in there when it rained and drowned in there?" or something like that. Other than that, I don't remember, really remember any hostility or anything. In fact, somebody said something and I said, "Yeah," I said, "there's one Japanese family in here, the boys grew up together," and I said, "two of the older boys got brides from Japan." And I said, "They both lost their wives within one year, they both went back to Japan within one year." And I said, "Tom was getting ready to celebrate their golden wedding anniversary right after Mom's birthday party," after she got to be about eighty-nine, the boys would have a birthday party for her every year. And then like the ninetieth and the hundredth, then they have a great big party. And my mom would say, well, she says, "I'm so grateful that all these kids can get together," and I think last count we had over 125 people there. Of course, she was gone by then, but before that time, she'd say, she says, "You know," she says, "with all these kids and all these grandkids," she says, "we all get together like this." She said, "I know that they're arguing about something and they're teasing each other," but she said, "there's never been kids, grandkids, great-grandkids that got into a brawl." She said, "They're always teasing and they're laughing and this and that. There's never been a fight among them." (Narr. note: When we argued when we were kids, she would say, "Talk in Japanese, so I can understand and settle your problem.")

TI: So that must have been, made her, a good feeling to have such a large extended family that was close. Well, so going back to December 7th, so Tom dug this big hole on that day, he goes home that afternoon, what happens next after that?

MY: Well, I don't know. I stayed in, my brother Mun had this gas station across the street from the house, and so I was standing there, and they had these big huge show windows. And so the boys, Mun was married and he lived in the back of the gas station. And so I just stayed there and I was watching out the window, watching these convoys go by. And it just dawned on me all of a sudden that, gosh almighty, all this time they were growing up and the kids were growing up, when the army convoys used to come by there, we used to sit alongside the road and wave at the soldiers. And I thought, god, I wonder what they'd do to us now. You don't know what kind of mental attitudes some of those soldiers got. So I often thought about that, but nothing happened. You hear about different parts of the country, they've had some hostilities and things. But I got to knock on wood, how fortunate we were that nothing happened. But December the 7th, they came and got my dad out of bed. So, you know, I still have no idea...

<End Segment 18> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.