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TI: Okay, so let's go to December 7, 1941, and why don't you tell me, yeah, from the beginning of that day how, you know, the day unfolded.

YI: December 7th was a Sunday and at school, because it's a Christian school, Mid-Pacific Institute, Sunday is our service day, church day. And I guess this whole thing started about seven in the morning, before seven in the morning, we heard a lot of buzzing, unusual, and somebody said, "Hey, somebody, Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor." Unfortunately, where we... school is located, you know, the Punch Bowl (hill, now a military cemetery) blocks our view into leeward so we cannot see Pearl Harbor. But right outside my room there's a balcony and then we can reach out and climb the roof. So we're all up on the roof and that's when the teachers got all excited and chased us down. So we went to breakfast and then --

TI: But from the roof could you see anything?

YI: It's, we can't see Pearl Harbor. But we can see the planes. And then I think a few other planes were visible, you know, the hinomaru, but there were a lot of, what you call ack-acks, I think it's our forces that were shooting the planes because we saw this fire where the old Honolulu stadium was. There's a store burning, you know, because from the spent aircraft fire I think. And (later) found out that my brother-in-law owned that building.

TI: Now do you know anything in terms of when that anti-aircraft hit the ground, were people... do you know anybody that was killed or anything.

YI: Yeah, I heard that there were a few casualties.

TI: So you go up to the roof, you see a little bit, the teachers make you come down.

YI: They chased us down and then I guess somebody gave orders for us to evacuate. I don't know whether we spent that night, Sunday night -- excuse me -- in the dorm or not. I think it was kind of too late to do anything so it was like, I mean, just on the main streets we didn't have light. And then Monday morning after breakfast, they told us to go home. And then we were on our own to go home.

TI: But on December 7th, you know, during the afternoon and night, what was the mood, what did people talk about?

YI: Well, we really didn't know what was happening because I think we were very isolated, you know, being together. So I guess we just sat around. Usually on Sunday after service, we can leave campus so, you know, most of us would. And the school would give us two tokens to take the bus, one to go and one to come home with. And then we'll come in town, you know, at least go and have a hot lunch or something, you know, we could have lunch for twenty-five cents and we could go see a movie for twenty-five cents. That's what we used to do Sunday after, I guess, we'll eat lunch and then go out because we didn't want to spend the lunch money. But, see, we had a different kind of schedule at school, we went to school on Saturday but we had Monday off instead of Saturday off. That made it real nice because, you know, if you go to Waikiki, you can swim all... pretty much had the beach to ourselves because our day off was Monday.

TI: So most other kids were in school or families were doing work and then you guys could have the whole place to yourself. But on that day, December 7th, were you able to leave the campus?

YI: No, no, we're not... it's a long time ago... I guess we sat around I think, you know. I think most of us went down to the gym to play basketball and stuff like that. That was a long time ago.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.