<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So let's, I'm gonna now move to December 7, 1941. Can you describe that day for me, for you what was it like?

MB: Well, it's hard to explain, I was so young. There had been many fathers who were picked up by the FBI and there's always that fear, always that concern, and it felt that they were connected to Japan. And somehow my father was interviewed by the FBI but was never picked up, and they felt that my oldest brother, who had finished Cal, had, was in the military, and so maybe that was why they didn't pick up my father, 'cause everybody else got picked up. We were worried for the longest time that... and my aunt and uncle lived in Berkeley, were afraid that they were going to be sent someplace, and so they came, moved into our small house. My brothers were all home. They were away at college, but they had to quit school and come home, and the house was just really bustling. And my mother was dying of cancer, and it was a tough time for my father. But we got to camp and my mother died and we just had to go on with our lives.

TI: So tell me, I'm sorry, tell me about your mother a little bit more. So she was sick before the war started? She had cancer? [MB nods] And what kind of cancer?

MB: I don't know if it was before the war, I guess it was, yeah. And there was no big research done on cancer victims in those days and probably didn't know what it was. She got weaker and weaker. Then in camp she continued to live in the barracks with us, not in the hospital, but she did get a special Pullman bed in the, on the train, and I was allowed to visit her occasionally. I guess they got fed better, too. I don't know. But I, going on the train, whenever we approached a city they made us pull the shades down so we wouldn't see what was going on. If they were, they had a military installation or something, we wouldn't see a thing. In broad daylight we had our shades drawn.

TI: But for you, I guess this time was difficult because not only were you being uprooted, but your mother was sick, and so it must be --

MB: Pardon me?

TI: Well, it must've been a very difficult time for you, that, having, not only to have to move, but to have your mother...

MB: Well, it was, I think, really difficult for my father. He never took care of children. That was the mother's job, caring for the kids. He had double duty; he had to take care of the community as well as his own family. Oh, let's see, I brought that, that sheet that I found.

TI: Yeah, so let me get it for you. So, so why don't you explain what this is and you can just hold it -- or I'll hold it and why don't you just explain what this is.

MB: Well, I didn't, I just found it last night and I hadn't really read it, so...

TI: Yeah, so it's the, kind of the instructions. I've seen this as a poster. You see it a lot of times on telephone poles and things like that, but this is the leaflet version of it, and it has, it looks like essentially the same information, but in a leaflet, which, in many ways, would make more sense for the families to have this to bring home to study rather than trying to read at a telephone pole. Interesting. Yeah, you should take good care of this. This is, this is good.

MB: My father had kept those posters that were posted in town and lot of other things, but when my, my sister-in-law, Flo Yoshiwara, and my brother separated and she got all those, so we don't have anything. And she has used them for school discussions and things like that.

TI: Going back, so your family, when they left Walnut Grove, what did you do with all your belongings? Was, was there anything special you had to do?

MB: Well, we sold the car and things that were saleable. I don't think we sold anything else, but we managed to put kind of major things in the garage and locked it up, and our tenants were very good. He was the, our milkman and never opened the garage door, and they were still intact, everything was intact.

TI: And so the milkman was renting the house? He was the...

MB: For thirteen dollars a month, amount, the ground rent, so it was a good deal for him.

TI: I see.

MB: But he kept it up nicely.

TI: And you mentioned selling the car and some other saleable things. Who did you sell it to?

MB: Can't remember. I don't know how he, my father advertised it, but somehow got word around. But there were valuable things that were taken from us, saying that they were war-oriented or they were, you know, like...

TI: Like contraband or something?

MB: Yeah, the swords and things, they were family heirlooms and so my father had to go turn them in, and after we, some months after we returned they said, "Come collect your things," but the swords had beautiful ornaments on the handle and all those good parts were taken, removed, and we never got them back.

TI: Now, during this time, do you recall people coming into Walnut Grove, the Japantown, just to buy things, coming down, like on weekends or something, trying to buy things?

MB: I don't remember that.

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