<Begin Segment 12>

MN: Now, you were a senior at John Marshall High when Pearl Harbor was attacked.

TI: Right.

MN: What were you doing on that Sunday, December 7th?

TI: Well, I was playing hooky from church, and I was working on my Christmas dress. And I had the radio on and I heard about Pearl Harbor. And so that's what happened on December 7th.

MN: Now, what was your first reaction when you heard this news?

TI: I was sort of unbelieving, you know. "It couldn't be true." My mother and father, they were just shocked, especially my father.

MN: What was it like going to high school the next Monday?

TI: It wasn't, it wasn't very nice. We Japanese students all clustered together and we just didn't do much talking, we just stayed together.

MN: Now, did you get harassed from any students or teachers?

TI: No, no, not at all. In fact, when I told my teacher that I'm going to have to leave, they were very kind and they let me take the textbooks into Santa Anita so I can finish my courses.

MN: Now, every Wednesday your father had been going to the Sun Life insurance company office on Grand to check up on his policies and he picked up this hakujin daughter of a neighbor, 'cause she worked there as a secretary. Now, after that, the first Wednesday of the Pearl Harbor attack, what did she do?

TI: She came down and told my father, "I don't ride with a 'Jap.'" So that was that.

MN: How did your father take that?

TI: Well, he said, "Well, sensou dakara, shikata ga nai."

MN: Now, the spring of 1942, the Terminal Islanders were kicked off of Terminal Island. Now, did any of those Terminal Islanders move into your neighborhood?

TI: No, they did not.

MN: Did you see them move into any of the churches in Little Tokyo?

TI: No, I didn't see that. We were under a five-mile curfew, so we traveled very little. But my father did go to the office.

MN: Did he get a special permit for that?

TI: No, because it was in the five-mile radius.

MN: Did any of the FBI take away any of your neighbors?

TI: Yes, my next-door neighbor, he was taken away.

MN: What was the explanation of why he was taken away?

TI: There was no explanation at the time, but he had been a ship chandler for Japanese ships that came in, he would supply them with groceries from his wholesale market. So I suspect that's what the cause was, that he was incarcerated very soon after Pearl Harbor.

MN: Now, you know, having heard something like this, how did that make you feel?

TI: It really scared my father. Really scared my father. And he took his rabbit, that rabbit rifle that he used to go, when he was a youth, used to go rabbit hunting. And he took that gun and buried it.

MN: Now, you were talking about this travel restriction. Can you share with us about the family that needed food and...

TI: Oh, that was in Terminal Island, we heard from them when we reached Santa Anita. My mother had some friends that lived in Terminal Island, so she told my mother how some of the families in the row of Japanese cottages the fishermen had some of the families didn't have any food, so the families that did have food would throw cans of food through the window. And then that's how the family was fed during that time. But very soon after that, they sent them away.

MN: Since we're talking about Terminal Island, I'm gonna go back a little bit. Can you share with us, your mother, she went to Kaki Gakkou on Terminal Island. Can you share with us what that is?

TI: Yes. It's a summer Bible school. And each summer, the Protestant, Japanese Protestant churches would all get together and they would go down to Terminal Island and they would, they had a church down there. And we would stay overnight, several nights, and we would have bible school, summer Bible school, studies. The children and the adults.

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