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TI: But let's, let's go back to December 7, 1941. Where were you when you heard about the bombing?

VW: I was in college, and my brother and I were, I think, in the house that we had rented. There were... there were five of us upstairs, five guys from the university. One guy lived alone, two guys lived in one room, and then Leonard and I lived in one room. And so when we heard about the war, we never told anybody that we were part Japanese anyway, and they didn't ask. So that was fine. But when the war broke out, then they thought the war would be over in two weeks.

TI: So they thought that it would be a fast war, the Americans would win in two weeks.

VW: Yeah, right away. They thought Japan was pretty backward, which wasn't true at all. And the newspapers and the radio and so on, they were all extremely prejudiced. And so they, I remember the guy in the radio saying that war'd be over in two weeks. And also that the Japanese were climbing trees yet and things like that, just ridiculous, you know, type propaganda. And so, but I kept quiet.

TI: Well, when you saw those things, like the war, when you heard your friend saying the war's gonna be over in two weeks, what were you thinking?

VW: Well, we knew they would, my dad knew also that it would be a long time. And we knew that, we knew that Japan would not be defeated in two weeks, no way. But we didn't say anything.

TI: Did you ever, did you or your brother ever talk to your father and what he felt about the war?

VW: Well, we did a little bit, but see, we were already in college, and so we didn't, we just went home on the weekends once in a while. Which was okay, but my dad said that it'd be a long flight, we knew that, and we believed him, too.

TI: Now, because of the war, did your father come under more careful scrutiny?

VW: Not at first, no. But that came a little later on, yeah. It was about... well when Roosevelt signed the order -- now, I didn't know about this, this executive order by the President at the time. I learned that about six years ago, if you can believe that. But this Executive Order 9066 was, was a very bad executive order. And so to this day, I worry about when a President's gonna sign an executive order. I really look at that and wonder, you know, I just shake my head that, you know... and Obama has signed a few of those, at least one that I know of. And I don't like executive orders, but you can understand probably why.

TI: Right, certainly.

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