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TI: Okay, then Monday morning --

YI: Yeah, Monday morning they told us to go home. And then they say pack whatever you need at home but, you know, I had very little so I packed everything, I guess I left the bedding but, you know, I packed all my clothes and then went home in a taxi. I could take the... the bus was running so I took the bus down to, in town where the taxi stand. So I went home, I can see Pearl Harbor, we passed, I guess it's called (Kamehameha) Highway, and I can see the ships burning, black smokes, that was only what... the following day, the ships were still burning.

TI: And what did you think when you saw those ships burning?

YI: I was worried about that what happened to my house. Waipahu is almost on the shoreline, well, Pearl Harbor... we're on the west end and then part of Waipahu is on the shoreline on the Pearl Harbor west side. Well, I mean, one day we found a machine gun bullet that hit our bath house but it was a stray so I don't know whether it was ours or the Japanese or not. But was, I think, a .22 rifle. But in the camp, oh yeah, there is an incident Sunday morning, so Sunday morning is the day they did the sports day for the older kids, and this fellow who was about two years older than me, he was going to the ballgame in his baseball uniform, and he got hit by a stray bullet or something that he died on the spot. That's the one death in the camp, I think.

TI: Was he nearby the camp or he was... do you know where he was?

YI: Just unlucky, I think, one of the strays I think, yeah, and he was alone. So if he was going to the ballpark with his friends, there may have been others that would have been hurt but he was going to the ballpark by himself. He was only seventeen, I think.

TI: So it hit home for people because someone in the camp was killed?

YI: Yeah, that was kind of tragic because that family didn't have a father already. And he was the sole breadwinner for the family, already working for the plantation.

TI: And so he had younger brothers and sisters?

YI: Younger brother was my classmate, yeah. But in the camp we practically knew everybody.

TI: So when you got to the camp, what were people talking about or what did you hear when you got to the camp?

YI: One was that, it took a couple of days to black out the house, you know, and that's when I sensed some discrimination, you know, they had to... I guess the so-called civil defense came into the picture, I don't know whether... because I wasn't home so I don't know whether there was some preparation but they needed block wardens, right, to see that none of the lights leaked out. They didn't let any of the Japanese become block wardens, okay. The Filipinos and the Portuguese used to just yell at us. You know, there's some leakage, the light. So I'd think, oh, this is where they were getting even with the Japanese, that we got the brunt of it. But, I mean, you know, most of us, I think that we were not involved with the military. Evidently there was a big military contingent in Hawaii, Pearl Harbor, Schofield, Wheeler Field, Kaneohe. But I don't think, you know, very many of them... I don't remember having any military dependent as a classmate. For one thing, Waipahu was not a military... not close to a military installation except Pearl Harbor. But there was school in that area by the time I was high school age already. They had the Pearl Harbor Elementary and high school, that's where the military kids went.

TI: So in the days after, were there any other restrictions so the blackout, you mentioned there's a beach access. Was that stopped or anything was there anything like that that you could remember, were there more restrictions?

YI: Yeah, well, one was that started gas ration, right? And most of the families didn't have car anyway so you didn't... and there was a mass rush to go and get the defense, what is called the defense job.

TI: You mean the jobs in the defense?

YI: Yeah, you know, because after December 7th, you know, they had to build a additional military installation. Because I think they brought more troops in I think and that's when a lot of plantation people left to go and look for defense jobs.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.