<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So how did your mother change? So now that, when you found out that your father's gonna leave and not knowing where, did your mother change?

MK: Yes. Number one, the first thing that happened, the whole congregation, all the Japanese congregation avoided the family, avoided the house, avoided the family, never came to the house, never came to the church. We had no money, because we, my dad or mom didn't have money per se , saved or anything, because everything was, as he conduct the service the donation would come in. That was his salary. Okay, my dad is gone. We have no income. So I don't know where Mom went; she'd go someplace and come back with some kind of food so we could live. People would never come to the house. Sometimes some small grocery would be delivered to our house. I think people was afraid to come to the house because they would get implicated because of association, so they avoided us. Every week, the FBI would come to our house. They would tear our house upside down. And it was just like my dad had suspected: they were looking for the money. And they dug, you wouldn't believe this, but they went under -- our house is off the, three feet off the ground -- they sent people to go under the house with shovels and dig under the house looking for that stuff. I never knew they were looking for that money, but they tore the house apart. Every week they would come, pull drawers out and just flip it upside down and throw it. Just like you'd see in the movie. Same way. And it'd be the same agents who'd come walking -- I would see 'em, recognize 'em...

TI: And this happened more than once, you said? This happened every week?

MK: Four, five times, easily.

TI: And they'd do the same thing?

MK: Do the same thing over and over, in different ways. It was just harassment. And my mother would just sit there, just... I said, "Mom, why take it?" "What for? They will come tear it apart again next week." Two weeks, she'd leave it like that, then the next week they'd come and dig under the house. Then leave it like that and next they'd go into the... even to the point they'd go to the furoba and tear the furoba, look inside the shelves and all that. Then they... question always came up. "What else you hiding? What else are you hiding?" So come to a point where she just, just gave up, but never do anything but kept the family together. And she kept on me. "Don't do anything. You might get taken away, too." I said, "I wanna hit the guys." She said, "Don't. If you hit them you might get taken away," then what's she gonna do?

TI: So it was very, almost humiliating for you and the family to just be subjected to this, this harassment every week.

MK: Constant.

TI: I'm wondering, so, this is a little unusual. I mean, most people that were picked up, they might have been searched once, but you were searched multiple times, and you mentioned the money. So the community had given your father lots of money and your father gave it to someone else to hide, but of course he didn't tell anyone else. He couldn't, because then the FBI would know. Do you think the community suspected something and they were telling the FBI, you know, "They have money hidden," or what do you think?

MK: I suspected somebody in the community knew that my dad had been collecting a lot of money, and he being associated so much with the Japanese society, might have thought that he had shipped the money back, but they really didn't know, and if he didn't ship it then he must have it someplace. Because he did collect a lot of money.

TI: Or perhaps because he went to Japan right before, he might have even...

MK: The timing was there, right? If anything, it's very suspicious.

TI: And so when you talked about how the community stayed away from the family after they picked up your dad, so there, there might have been different reasons?

MK: No, I think most of that, being away from the family, the community staying away from us, was primarily because, I think, basically because they were afraid to be implicated. Several ladies came, especially Nisei girls, Nisei ladies who were good friends with my mom, would come. They would come late at night, or they would sneak in from the back side, come to the house, not where they could be seen. Sometimes you'd, the back door, somebody'd knock on the door and it'd be the Japanese lady coming, and so... quickly open the door, come inside the house and come to help my mom. But it was, to me, anyway, I felt it was, they was afraid to be implicated because she came over to talk to my mom. There was... I know five, five ladies that used to come regularly at night. Late at night, early in the morning, come and, come see my mom, but never during the day.

TI: But you said they were Nisei?

MK: Niseis.

TI: So not, not Issei?

MK: Niseis and Sanseis, no Isseis.

TI: Why do you think that? I, if you had, if you had asked me I would have guessed Isseis would have visited your mom because of the Japanese connection, but you're saying Niseis and Sanseis.

MK: Nisei, because they... these Niseis, the mothers were very close to the church, and then these Niseis are almost my mother's age. My mother's Issei, true, but she's twenty, under thirty, and these, the Niseis and Sanseis in her era were all her age. We're -- like you said, the immigration stopped in nineteen-twenty-something, so we're about two or three generations behind. That's why, to this day, every time, everybody asks me, "You Sansei?" I say, "No, I'm Nisei." "How come you Nisei?" [Laughs] They didn't --

TI: Okay, that makes sense. So a lot of it was they were more friendly to your mother.

MK: Yeah, they're friendlier to my mom, and then they felt that, because they're American citizen, not knowing what had happened to United, in the United States, but in Hawaii, figuring that they were American citizens, they wouldn't get implicated.

TI: Okay, that makes sense.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.