<Begin Segment 12>

MN: Now, you were a tenth grader at Roosevelt High when Pearl Harbor was attacked. What do you remember of December 7, 1941?

AM: Well, I was really kind of disappointed that the war started, but I thought, well, I better go to school anyway, somehow, so I went to the school and everything seemed so quiet and then people didn't talk about the war that much, I remember. I remember seeing Bruce Kaji, who was, he was in Roosevelt same time I was, and we didn't even talk that much about the war. And then when we got the order to evacuate I had to stop school and then... well, I was wondering what to do with everything. My father, who had purchased a house on, near the Hollenbeck Park, we were living there when the war broke out, so this house had a four car garage, and so my father decided to put all the belongings into the garage, in one of the garage. And right, it was a year before the war broke out that my father started taking pictures for the White Memorial Medical School, and he was taking all the graduates pictures about, about two or three years before the World War II started. And then after this one group he was taking, when the war started, so he asked, when one of the students came after the picture, he asked him, "You know, I live in this house near where White Memorial was. Would anybody be interested in staying there?" He said, "Oh, sure. I think there is somebody." So this person arranged to have this person rent the place, and so when my father heard that he was quite, quite relieved. So what he did was he left everything, the pots and pans and dishes, everything in the way that we were using it and also the furniture, and all they had to do was move in and the bed and everything was there, so all the, all the personal belongings, he put it into the garage. And so the students were very happy because all they had to do was move in. So each student, as they finished, they got a replacement for somebody to stay there so they were paying rent, and they paid it to the bank, which went to the payment of the house. So he was renting it very cheap to the students, just enough to make the payment. So that way he was very fortunate, so when we, when the war ended, well, there was still students there, so what my father did was he converted one of the four car garage into a living quarter --

MN: Before we go to after the war, let me go back to December 7th, okay?

AM: Okay.

MN: That was a Sunday.

AM: Yeah.

MN: And you were going into town with your father on that Sunday.

AM: Yeah.

MN: And do you remember how you heard that announcement?

AM: Yes. Every Sunday, or weekends, my father used to take me into Little Tokyo to go to his studio so I could do some help there, or go to the Sunday school, whatever. Well, on that December 7th morning, as we were going over the First Street bridge -- my father had a radio in his car, which was, well, it was kind unusual to have a radio that much those days because car radios weren't that many around -- well, he had the news on and then on the news that the Pearl Harbor attacked by the Japanese and it got bombed there. So I couldn't believe it, that Japan would be attacking Pearl Harbor. So that happened, so my father heard it, too, so I guess we thought, well, there's gonna be a war, so that's, that's when I first heard about the war in Japan, yes.

MN: Now, did your father have to shoot a wedding that day?

AM: Yes, he did. But as it happened, the wedding went on okay and then during the reception, FBI came to arrest some of the people who were at the wedding reception and they were taken, taken in and taken to... they were arrested, anyway.

MN: Well at the time you didn't know where they were taking them, is that right?

AM: No. No, we didn't know.

MN: Did the FBI arrest any of your neighbors?

AM: No, not that I know of.

MN: Do you remember the JACL's Anti-Axis office in Little Tokyo?

AM: There was an organization like that, yeah, but I wasn't too much into that. No, I wasn't too, no, I'm not too familiar with that.

MN: Do you remember what people were saying about the JACL?

AM: Well, first of all that, I think the Issei people, they were being arrested and thing like that, so they were not too happy with the JACL, what was, what they were doing and what kind of thing they were doing, so they weren't very well thought of, I guess.

MN: Now, when you say the Isseis were not happy, were they, did they think the JACL was furnishing names on, of the Isseis?

AM: That could've been, yes.

MN: Now, when the Terminal Islanders got kicked out of their house in early 1942, did they move into your Boyle Heights neighborhood?

AM: There were quite a few that came to Boyle Heights area. Let's see, I remember some of the students that started to come to the school, they were from Terminal Island, too. There weren't that many, but they were not concentrated anymore, but I'm trying to think of... you see, the thing I knew, the thing that I was familiar with the Terminal Island people was because my father used to go every Wednesday to Terminal Island to take pictures for them because it was too hard for them to come all the way into Little Tokyo to take pictures, so my father decided to go every Wednesday when he had the time to take pictures over there, so he would arrange appointments. And then this Mr. Murakami built a building there and he told my father, they were good friends, so Mr. Murakami told my father, you're welcome to use the, his second floor space to, for his studio every Wednesday, if you want. So my father started opening his studio every Wednesday over there. Whenever there was an appointment he would go. So that's how close my father was with the Terminal Island people. And so when the Terminal Islanders went into Manzanar, quite a few of them went to Manzanar, so he was, Mr. Murakami who was a Terminal Islander, he had his business there and my father was very good friends with Mr. Murakami.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.