<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, now let's back up a little bit in time just before the camp time. You were in your last year of high school, is that right? You were a senior in 1941?

LK: Yes, yes.

AI: And I know that for some families that even before Pearl Harbor, their parents started worrying about the relations between U.S. and Japan. Do you recall your parents ever talking about that or hearing any kind of rumor about difficulties?

LK: Well, my mother in 1941 in June, she went to Japan to visit and she brought my younger brother and sister. And then while they were there, things got bad, relations got real bad and then they realized that they'd better get home. And they planned to be home, you know, in time for my brother and sister to go back to school in September, but they had quit the sailings back and forth. And then there was one more, there was gonna be one more ship going back and luckily they got on and I think they got back -- well, I think it was past September. But they were delayed and so we knew there was a war coming on.

[Interruption]

AI: Brother and sister got on that last boat coming back to the U.S. And so did you and your father, did you have some sense that they might possibly be in danger or that they might...

LK: Yes, we worried about it, and so we were very relieved when they --

AI: Naturally.

LK: -- were, got on the, on the last boat.

AI: Right.

LK: And very thankful, but then shortly after that was Pearl Harbor and so we were all scared.

AI: Right.

LK: We were concerned when Pearl Harbor had -- and then there was all these headlines and all -- but we were concerned that they would come down through, from Vancouver area on the Strait of Juan de Fuca and attack Seattle because we had Boeing.

AI: Oh, so even then you were concerned.

LK: Yes, and then the Bremerton shipyards. So we, we knew we were in kind of a strategic area and we used to worry that they were going to invade us. The enemy, you know. They were the enemy. So, to us it was, they were the enemy just like everybody else felt that they were, you know.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.