<Begin Segment 13>

TI: And so your father was picked up late at night, so, I guess, probably early morning.

SO: Yeah, one o'clock in the morning.

TI: Yeah, on December 8, 1941, and then he was brought to the... so pronouncing it "Kilauea"?

SO: Kilauea.

TI: Kilauea Military Camp. So I'll abbreviate by saying "KMC," the military camp. You said he was there about a month.

SO: Little over a month, I guess.

TI: Now, so did your family ever go visit your father?

SO: Well, since the officer told him that they were gonna take him to a (mainland military camp) that we can visit him once. And then fortunately we had two cars, so the whole family were able to visit him at the Kilauea Military Camp. So that Sunday, we went in, and then our store, we never did close. So to close that Sunday, we didn't have keys, so we just went with the store (unlocked).

TI: So explain that a little bit more. You say your store was never closed, so it was open every day?

SO: Yes.

TI: And what kind of hours would it be open?

SO: About seven in the morning until... we used to have, we used to sell a lot of bread and things like that to the show customers. We used to wait until the movie got over every night. So that's the length of time that...

TI: So maybe, what, nine, ten o'clock at night?

SO: Yeah, nine-thirty.

TI: And then at the end of the day when you close, you wouldn't lock the doors?

SO: Well, the front (wooden door), but no keys. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so there was just a way of... you'd be inside the...

SO: Yeah, we used to have our own door, just put a lumber on it, and the back door, no keys.

TI: And so when you went to go visit your father on that Sunday, everyone went, and so there was no one there, and there was no way to really lock it with a key.

SO: No.

TI: So that must have been... yeah, that must have been memorable for you to have to leave the place.

SO: Yeah.

TI: Okay, so on that Sunday, you went to the military camp. So what was the military camp like? What did you see there?

SO: Just a ordinary barracks with cots all lined up, and that's where they used to sleep. And then this Hongwanji minister from the Kau church was interned, and then he wrote a letter to his wife, and then he gave it to my father's brother-in-law. And the brother-in-law dropped the letter, and the MP picked it up, then he asked him, "Who did you come and visit?" He said, "Come to (visit) Kanesaburo Oshima." So now my father got blamed for that. So he had to clean the barrack for a month by himself for his wrongdoing, which he didn't do.

TI: Oh, so your, his brother-in-law accidently dropped the letter, the letter from, you said, a minister, a Buddhist minister? And then when he got caught, he said he was visiting your father. So your father had to do the barracks cleaning for a whole month.

SO: And that letter was mailed by the KMC to our family, which didn't belong to us. That's how we found out that that letter... then a few years later we found out that, what came about over there, what happened. We didn't know anything.

TI: Do you know if that upset your father, that he had to clean the barracks for a whole month?

SO: They overheard that, what happened and then he had to do that penalty, take that penalty, but he didn't complain and then he just did his job.

TI: Now, when you saw your father on that Sunday, what was he like? Do you remember him, talking with him or anything about him?

SO: Just a normal way of just talking, that he's gonna be sent away to the mainland concentration camp.

TI: Did he seem sad about it or worried or anything like that?

SO: Well, inside, he was worried because he has twelve children, war going on, food shortage, and then he was one of the breadwinners. And had cars, but, you know, there's no gasoline to run the taxi. So he was really worked up.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.