<Begin Segment 9>

MN: Now, in the spring of '42 the government issued a military exclusion zone for Japanese Americans, and Reedley was not included in the exclusion zone, but how did that order impact the Reedley community?

LW: Oh yes, that, soon as the Reedley area was still a free zone, farm families that lived in the military zone began to -- those that were able to -- were making plans to move into the Reedley area, so a good number of families were able to move in. They had, some had families, some had friends, others simply moved on their own, and the Japanese American population increased by, I don't, I don't know what the percentage was, but we had a lot of new families moving in.

MN: Where were they finding places to live?

LW: Almost anywhere. Barns, sheds, shacks, a few fortunate ones were able to find vacant homes, but most of them were makeshift, lived in makeshift housing, wherever they could find a roof over their heads.

MN: And these newer Japanese Americans, what area of California were they coming from?

LW: They were coming, a few from the Bay Area. As I remember, most of the families were coming from the Salinas, Monterey, mid coast areas.

MN: Now your community saw this huge increase of Japanese Americans. Was there hostility from the non Nikkei community in Reedley?

LW: No, I don't remember that. Hearing about it or, of course, experiencing that, I think it was just accepting the fact that we were getting new Japanese families here. And they, Reedley seemed, was in a very fortunate situation as far as hostility from the larger, major population was concerned. They seemed to just accept the fact that we were part of the community.

MN: And what happened to your sister Edna in San Francisco?

LW: Well, it started out with the, with my getting word from my father, who came out to the ranch while I was working, and he said, "Keigo, you'll have to go to San Francisco," because my sister and her family and all of San Francisco has received the order to evacuate. They only had four days to evacuate, "So you need to go up and help Edna's family pack up their art goods store." See, the Shiota family had an art goods store on Grant Avenue and, of Japanese art goods, so I immediately drove up to San Francisco and the next day we started to pack up all their art goods in the store and loaded it onto a big truck that was parked right there on Grant Street. We loaded all the goods. I think it took us about two days to pack up everything and put it into the truck that was going to haul all the, all the art goods.

MN: And what happened to the truck, or what happened to your sister?

LW: Well fortunately, by that time we had moved to Dinuba, where we had a large home and a large basement, and the truck brought all the goods down to Dinuba, California -- that's where we were living at that time -- and they loaded, they unloaded all the art goods in the large basement area that we had in our home. The home itself began to be populated by our families that had to evacuate their particular area, so the San Francisco family moved into our home.

MN: Do you remember when this was, when this occurred in 1942, what month?

LW: Well, it occurred, let's see, the area that, where people began to move into the Central Valley since it was, it was a free zone, began in, let's see, it must've been about February, around March, in the spring. And by the time we got, I believe around July we began to hear word that that area, the Central Valley area too, would be a military zone, so that's when we began to get very anxious. Maybe it's, we too will be ordered to evacuate. So that, that was, even though many families had moved in, we all became very anxious about what the government would, would declare.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.