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TI: So let's, let's talk about December 7, 1941, so describe that day for me. Where were you?

HL: We were, I was, a friend of mine was, she was, we did things on Sunday quite a bit and she was gonna come over and we were gonna go to the movies. Didn't think anything much, so was waiting for her to come. She comes barreling in and she says, "Have you heard, have you heard?" And I said, "What are you talking about?" Says, "Turn the radio on," and that's when we found out that Pearl Harbor had been bombed and the war had started. And then the next day I found out --

TI: So what did you think? You had just been in Japan just a few months earlier, and now Japan had just attacked --

HL: All I could think is I'm glad I'm back here, that I'm with my family and that I'm, that I'm not... 'cause there's some people that I know that was, see, what happened is we were one of the last ships that got across because couple of people I know was on the ship that was on the way to the States, but the United States froze Japanese assets in July of 1941, and so all the ships at that time were Japanese ships, except the President line. Of course, the President line didn't come into Seattle, so it was the Hikawa, the Hie-maru, you know. And so those ships just turned right around, went back to Japan, and those people were stuck in Japan. Some of them that were lucky, they, the ships went on into Vancouver and they disembarked in Vancouver and then were able to get back, but then they were the few lucky ones. But most of them just turned around, went right back to Japan.

TI: Do you have a sense of how many Niseis were, were in Japan during the war?

HL: I don't have any idea, but then I have a book that was written by a, a lady that was in Japan during the war. She was a Nisei and it's this, she calls it Letters to Miye. It's, she apparently wrote letters to her friend in, in the States and then she chronicled it. I have the book if you'd like to read it.

TI: Yeah, no, I'm really interested more and more in the stories of the Niseis who were in Japan during the war, so I'm curious. Yeah, so I'll...

HL: Yeah, I'm sorry she passed away last year. But she was a very interesting person.

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