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TI: Because you were a senior when, you know, December 7, 1941, happened.

AO: Correct.

TI: So let's talk about that day. So December 7, 1941, what were you doing?

AO: Well, my dad had just completed the renovation of his market building. He had his whole building and it had been destroyed by mostly, major portion of the building had been destroyed by fire. And it took several months to reconstruct and it had finally been completed and prior to December 7th my father had a few events celebrating the completion of that building. But on December 7th he was going to have another small reception to more or less to invite a few of the market tenants as well as the people that were involved in the construction, the reconstruction of the building. And so we were... I was there quite early and my brothers and my dad, they were there at the time all hell broke loose. So we were supposed to have a small reception, you know, to celebrate the completion of the renovation of the building.

TI: And so could you see, from where you were, what was happening over at Pearl Harbor?

AO: Yes, we saw it very clearly, we're not very far from Pearl Harbor. We're right in town so we could see it, we could hear all the noises, we could hear all the noises, we could see all the black smoke and all the thundering noises of all the explosion of the ships. And then I was looking up in the sky, you could see the planes, you could see all the explosion of shots, I even got to see two Japanese planes, yes, we got to see all that.

TI: And what were you thinking when you saw this activity, this, you know, this happening?

AO: Well, number one is it's unbelievable, I never realized that maybe there was some people that expected something like this but as far as I'm concerned, I never expected anything like this, it was a shock, hard to believe that something like that was happening. Well, it's just unbelievable, I mean, it was terrible seeing all that black smoke and all that noise coming out of Pearl Harbor. We could hear all that, we were close enough that we could see and hear.

TI: So you see the Japanese planes, you realize that Pearl Harbor is under attack, at this point was there any concern on your part about your father being Japanese and anything might happen to him?

AO: No, no concern, so all we do then of course then naturally everybody turn on the radio, we got a report that this was a real thing, that Japan... we're under attack by the Japanese and that there wasn't anything we could do about our celebration of the completion of the renovation, So my brother, my older brother took my dad home and I had to kind of clean up the mess of the preparatory work that had been done for the celebration. Then that was completed so I started to go home and of course the driving was very difficult because I was so darn nervous, I was shaking, you know, in that something so unusual was happening and you could still hear the loud noises coming from Pearl Harbor, still the black smoke and then you still listen to all the radio about what is happening. So, no, it was unbelievable, that's about it.

TI: So sounds like you were pretty shaken as you were, you know, going home or probably that whole day.

AO: Well, yes, it's hard to imagine but at the same time we didn't feel good. We got very mad at the Japanese for having attacked us because, you know, there's no distinction being made that the Japanese or we were all Americans, well, people living in Hawaii, and we were being attacked period, you know.

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