<Begin Segment 10>

AI: And what about Pearl Harbor day, December 7th? What do you remember about that day?

LK: Well, we were pretty shocked at the news, but tried to carry on and I think I had a date to go to a movie. [Laughs] And I did go and, but we felt kind of, very self-conscious. So as soon as the movie was over we just went right home.

AI: Did, what did you face the next day, I guess it was Monday? And you went back to school, what was it like going back to school?

LK: Gee, I can't remember exactly, but I think that we were... we felt we were Americans and that we felt that Japan was our enemy just like everybody else did. So I think that kind of made us feel like we shouldn't be, have such a big complex about it. Although we were well aware that, you know, the headlines say, "Japs bomb Pearl Harbor," so they related us to the, being part of the enemy.

AI: Did you ever experience that yourself, being called a Jap or having someone be negative towards you at that time after Pearl Harbor?

LK: Oh, I think so. Yeah. And we had customers who confronted us and...

AI: That must have been difficult.

LK: It was because those were customers who would charge their groceries, they asked my dad. And they should have been thankful that my dad was so generous. But we lost certain customers but then there were certain others who assured us that they considered us to be Americans.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.