Densho Digital Archive - Fred Tadashi Shingu Interview (denshovh-sfred

<Begin Segment 11>

TI: And let me back up a little bit and talk a little bit about your sister, because your older sister who was four years older, let's talk about her a little bit. So where was she right now?

FS: She was in Japan.

TI: Okay, so let's talk about, how did she, when did she go to Japan?

FS: In my, when I was in, when I was in the eighth grade I was going, I think eighth grade I was in Sacramento. We were in Sacramento. And I caught scarlet fever, so they, they put me in a county hospital, so at that same time is my sister supposed to go back to Japan. I was supposed to go back, too, back to Japan. So I couldn't go. It's a good thing I couldn't go because I would've been dead when I went back to Hiroshima. So that's the last time I saw my sister.

TI: Now, when you say you were supposed to go, why were you and your sister supposed to go to Japan? What was the reason for going to Japan?

FS: My dad wanted me to go back. It wasn't, I didn't want to go, but my dad said, "No, you got to go back and look, look at the farm over there." He had a farm over there, so supposed to look at it, after that, I guess, I'm not sure about that... anyway, it's a good thing I didn't. [Laughs]

TI: Because that was in Hiroshima, which again, yeah, during the war was devastated by the bomb.

FS: Yeah.

TI: But your sister, so she went to Japan, so what did she do in Japan?

FS: Well, right after that I had, my dad had her all made up already before that. She was supposed to marry my second cousin in Japan. And then, then the war came, the war started, and right after the war started, I would say one, one year, two year after the war started, he got killed when they bombed a part of the railroad station. He was working over there and he got killed over there. So then my sister stayed, stayed over there until when the bomb came down, the atom bomb came, and she had, she got a little scratch, I think, when she went outside with my niece. After that then, after the war ended in '45, my sister came back to United States in about '49 or '50, she came back with my niece.

TI: And so she was, she only got a scratch, but you didn't know that when, when you probably got, when you heard the news that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, what went through your mind when you, when you heard that?

FS: At that time I didn't know what, where she was or anything, so I couldn't say if, if she was whatchamacall. Then I found out later that... we did get a letter from her. I don't know how they got, the letter came, but the letter came and then she said, like I said, about after the war ended, she said she's gonna come back here 'cause my dad, my dad called her back.

TI: Well it must've been a huge relief to the family when you got that letter, to, just to know that she was okay. So let's go back to, to your, your life, and so you talked about how you and your mother had this box made, put all your belongings in there and brought it to the train station.

FS: Yeah.