<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Now I'm gonna start asking you about the war. On December 7, (1941), which was a Sunday, what were you doing that day and how did you hear about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

LW: It was a Sunday afternoon and I had arranged with my Japanese American classmate and buddy in Reedley to pick me up and we would ride together in his car -- he had just purchased a car -- so we would go to a neighboring town of Sanger to watch the, the Japanese American girls' basketball team play basketball. They were in a league of Japanese American teams. And so he came to pick me up right after lunch, and as we were driving towards Sanger we heard the announcement on his car radio about the bombing of Pearl Harbor. We felt, oh, that's, that's really a terrible thing, but it was still something that we could not emotionally relate to because our childhood was one of being hundred percent Americans, this is our land, so we heard, we knew very little about Japan. So we were not really emotionally involved, mentally involved with Japan, so we said, well, it's a bad thing. We'll go on and do Sanger to see, see the basketball game.

MN: No, on this trip to Sanger, or on the way back, did you experience any hostility at all?

LW: Well, we dropped in the Sanger coffee shop just before the game and we heard on the radio the announcements that were coming in about the bombing, but we went right ahead and ordered our coffee and pie. But we began to wonder about these strange looks that the customers were, we seemed to think that they were throwing toward us. They must've known we were Japanese Americans. So that was the one thing we noticed, but we went on there, from there, to the basketball game and after the game we came back home.

MN: How were your family when you came back home? What was their reaction?

LW: Well, we had all gathered, by that time we had all gathered and my dad and mom, the rest of us were very, well, especially my dad and mom were very concerned about the event of that day, and they were shaking their head, they were, I know that they were very anxious about what was going on.

MN: Now, did the FBI pick up any Japanese Americans in the Reedley community?

LW: I don't, I don't believe so. I don't think any of us were, any of the Japanese Americans were picked up.

MN: Now by this time one of your older sisters was married and living in San Francisco. What were you hearing from her?

LW: Well, she, San Francisco, they began to experience some of the fears of, that was being propagated in the, in the media about possible invasion or hostility from Japanese military, so the, they had a, what do you call it, a brownout here in San Francisco, at night. My sister told about having to draw down all the blinds so that no lights would be showing, shown, the city would be browned out. And so she was expressing this kind of fear to our family in Reedley.

MN: Was she writing or did you have a telephone that you were able to communicate with?

LW: My dad was good at writing, so it was mainly by correspondence. Edna, my sister married in San Francisco, would, was good about corresponding. There may have been some phone calls, but I don't remember them. It was primarily letters.

MN: Did your farm have a phone?

LW: Oh yes. We had a phone, one of these farm phones that there several people on the same system, and the old time farm phones we had to crank up the power in order to listen. It was battery operated, so in order to get the electricity to operate the phone we had to power it up by cranking it up with a, with a hand phone, and then we got enough power and we could usually make the connection. But there were others on the line and we had to avoid being on the same line.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.