<Begin Segment 16>

MN: Well, let's get into the war years, then.

CH: Huh?

MN: Let's get into World War II.

CH: Oh, World War II, World War II.

MN: December 7, 1941, was a Sunday.

CH: Exactly.

MN: What happened on Monday?

CH: Sunday... oh, wait. December 7th, Sunday, Monday. Monday, ka? Oh, I found out Monday when I woke up, was it December 7th? Oh, December 7th I found out there was war, they say. I didn't believe war. But this guy, he got radio, he came and told me, "Hey, there's a war between Japan..." "Oh, bullshit. Where the war at?" "In, someplace in a little island someplace in Hawaii." He said Pearl Harbor. Pearl Harbor? Where the hell is... I didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. "Okay, well, Japan airplane bombed that place and war started." "Yeah?" So, okay, the war started, okay, then we found out they had all these guys still going school. I woke up, everybody, "Hey, I guess the war is on 'cause you didn't go to school today." "Oh, there's a war going on." See, I woke up kind of late, December 8th. And I was a fisherman already. So when December 8th came, all the... oh, that day, it happened that my boat that I was working on, I had some kind of engine problem or something that they couldn't go out. They were fixing something in the boat. Meanwhile, maybe fifty percent of the boat went out, it was sardine season. When the December 7th bomb, they came, road that they fish, they came into that harbor where they put, between that lighthouse and this other, they put a barrier, screen, so they couldn't get in. All the boat, all the Issei was taken off. All the Nisei remained and the boat came in. And that's the first one that went to Tujunga internment. Used to be CCC camp before, Tujunga. And the family, they didn't know where they went. But we later found out they were in Tujunga. But that was just a little, little bit of Japanese, Issei, little bit. Not the majority.

MN: When were you arrested?

CH: Huh?

MN: When were you arrested?

CH: February 2 or 4, I forgot. February 2, 1942. That's the time majority came. I was sleeping yet, and I couldn't go noplace. That's the time he came knocking on the door. So I told 'em, "Your name Charles O. Hamasaki?" "Yeah, why?" "Put your coat on and get your shoe on, and we'll see you." I said, "What do you mean? I don't want to go noplace." "You're alien, 'enemy alien,'" that guy told me. I said, "I didn't do nothing." "Well, we got an order, 'enemy alien,'" he told me. When I went outside, you ought to see all the FBI. There was a hundred of 'em all over Terminal Island arresting all, every different individual Issei. And I was the youngest one.

MN: How did they know you were Issei?

CH: Why I got arrested, why they had that record, when I, fishing license, commercial fishing license, I should have put down "Terminal Island," I was born. Then I would have never... I put, I was honest, you know. I put "Japan." Well, that's why they came and arrested me.

TI: Yeah, so it's probably those records.

CH: Huh? Yeah, they went through the Fish & Game and look at all the record.

MN: Okay, your house had a... most Terminal Island had a himono pole, and you had one, too, and the FBI, what did they think that was?

CH: You know, you know what a dry fish pole look like?

TI: I'm not sure. Explain it.

CH: See, okay, they're, sardine, mackerel, Spanish mackerel, everything, you split it open and put it up in the air. They were putting it in the basket like that, put it up there. If you put it down there, there's lot of fly come around and then they contaminate that thing. So we put it way up there. Because when you put it way up there, the wind, the wind make that himono, that dried fish, taste better. So each family had that thing. And, you know, when the FBI came, they thought all those thing up there, that pole up there, they thought it was antenna, spy, they say. Radio. They took the radio and the picture and they took all the, confiscated all the little electrical kind of thing, radio especially, and sword, and emperor and empress picture, they all tore it down. So I explained, "That's not an antenna, that's a dried fish pole." "Well, it look like an antenna," he said. "Look, where the wire then?" "Oh, they shut up, they went home." Even today, I still got one in my whole area. I'm probably the only one that got that thing. Lot of people, they, "It's a Boys Day, that's why you put that koi up there? Either that, or you put American or Japan flag up there." Today, recently. Well, what that pole doing there? They don't know. See, my next-next door is from Bainbridge Island. Bainbridge Island, my next-next door. They, both of them passed away, but they didn't know what that was. She used to come and ask me every time.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.