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TI: So let's move to December 7, 1941. Do you remember that day?

BS: Yes.

TI: So describe what happened that day for you.

BS: Well, my oldest sister heard it on the radio, and so I remember her and my youngest sister discussed it outside the house and so my sister went into the field where my father was working and informed him, and that's all, about all I remember of December 7th. I don't think the full impact, I didn't feel it because it didn't mean that much to me at that time because I was so young. I didn't know what would happen to us, or I didn't even think about it. I was just twelve years old and it, that's all I thought about it.

TI: How about when you went to school the next day? Was there any difference or any comments or anything happening?

BS: They were, the students were discussing about the start of the war and... but soon after, everything was back to normal. I think we were just too young to really understand what was going on.

TI: Do you remember, like a, maybe like teacher or a principal ever saying anything to the class about what happened and anything about the Japanese?

BS: No. There were no assembly called or within each class, in my class nothing was said and it was just back to normal.

TI: Earlier you mentioned that after the war had started, they encouraged people to do victory gardens and so you, you said you started your own victory garden. Was that pretty common for other classmates to do the same thing?

BS: Yeah, I think the whole school was involved in something like that, and they were selling stamps, instead of war bonds which would, might cost like twenty dollars, I think they were selling war stamps for like ten cents, and so we would help the war effort by buying these stamps. And I guess we used to fill a book. You'd paste each stamp in a book and then if you got twenty dollar worth, then it's like a twenty dollar bond and I think you would eventually get twenty-five dollar for that when it matured.

TI: And, and who would you sell the stamps to, or where would you get the money to buy a ten cent stamp?

BS: Well, I guess I had to ask my parents and then the school, someone at the school was selling them. There was a lot of talk about helping the war effort, like the victory garden and the stamps and other patriotic things that we could all do to help with the war efforts.

TI: And so how did you feel during this time when you had all these patriotic actions like buying stamps and other talk about things like that? How did you feel when that was going on? Did you feel like you were a hundred percent American, or was there sort of this lingering sense of, of being Japanese or that the Japanese did this? I mean, how did you think about this?

BS: At that time, I didn't think of myself as Japanese or white or American or what. At our age I think it didn't matter and we didn't get into that kinda adult things. We were just kids and we went to school and studied and played and just did what normal twelve year old did, and the war was not our problem.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.