<Begin Segment 11>

TI: So, again, talk about, then, when these kind of came up, it's whatever you can carry, you have a whole house, four bedroom house --

MY: Exactly. What to do with them? And we had, both our parents, and Al and I discussed essentially, what shall we do with all of this? That kept going on for a while until my father somehow discussed this issue with his employer, the Gunst family. Well, I knew the Gunst house because I used to help my father clean that house, a huge basement, empty, like a typical basement. And Mr. Gunst essentially said to my father, "Why don't you use our basement?" And so we were able to bring everything into the basement.

TI: Okay, so you were fortunate. You had...

MY: We were very fortunate in that we could bring anything and everything from kitchen equipment to couches and things like that. The total house. Also, by then, contraband, as defined by the government, was to be submitted to the local police department. Well, as you know, my father was a sword connoisseur and collector, and he had quite a few swords, and they became a contraband item and we were to deliver those to the local police, which was, for us on that list, at Sixth Avenue and Geary, right across from the old French hospital. The police station is still there. It's a very small police, local police office. And we took one hundred six or seven pieces, swords or sword related sharp edged instruments, yari and naginata, etcetera, and no two ways about it, the government said bring, you must submit it, so my father did. In those days, once the government said something, that was the law. You didn't question it, which we had no question of following any of their direction, so the swords were sent to the police station. Other family items, furniture, art goods were sent to the, stored in the Gunst basement.

TI: And so these swords, like a hundred plus swords, I mean, these were antique, valuable possessions.

MY: That's right.

TI: Was... and in many cases, I've talked to other people, and when they did things like this they never got them back. And so I, we're jumping around a little bit, but why don't you tell me what happened to those swords?

MY: Well, if you've seen any stories about what happened to the stored, S-T-O-R-E-D, goods by the Japanese, at places where they were stored, hundred percent of those places were rifled and looted. So almost all Japanese, if not all Japanese, no, almost all Japanese who stored them following the direction lost most of their important items. In my, in our family's case, we followed every other Japanese family and gave it to the local police office. Well, our local police on Sixth Avenue and Geary, our family was the only family that stored any of their contraband items.

TI: So that, so you're the only ones that turned things into that station?

MY: Yes. Other families who lived around there, our neighbors, didn't have any contraband items. Or they didn't have swords, I know. Anyway, we stored them, we got a piece of paper, "the Yamanaka family, one package" kind of a thing, and my dad kept that, naturally. So all items were stored in this manner for us in two distinct locations. Well, getting the furniture and other household items was no problem because it was in a private home. And then when my father and I went to claim the swords, we had heard about these families that your referring to, and I had no illusion of getting anything back. And so when we submitted the slip at the police office at Sixth and Geary, the response was, "Hell, man, this was four years ago. We don't know anything about it." That was the response I expected and Al expected, until this voice came from back and said, "Hey, fellows, wait a minute. There's a package here we don't know what's it all about." By coincidence it was my father's wrapped up swords, so we got everything back including the contraband swords. [Laughs]

TI: That's, so were the police just incredibly -- what's the right word -- honest at this place? I mean, here these swords were worth quite a --

MY: Well, in the police station, unlike today where they take you in, like drugs and such, these things didn't happen. I mean, fifty years ago people were, in quotes, "honorable," so this was the normal, expected procedure. So it was unknown package, nobody touched it, "it probably belonged to somebody, so we better not touch it" approach, and so there it was fifty years later -- no, no, excuse me, four years later.

TI: Yeah, you were, based on the stories I've heard, your family's very lucky to have this.

MY: As far as I know there's no other family that was so lucky. I don't know of any family that got everything back, including furniture, kitchen dishes and such, to contraband material.

TI: No, that's a good story.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.