<Begin Segment 10>

TI: So because after Bainbridge Island happened, I think the other communities on the West Coast kind of knew that this was gonna happen.

TK: Knew what was gonna happen, yeah.

TI: But you were the first, so I'm just curious, how did it, from your perspective, how did it kind of play out, or how did that happen? How did you find out and what was the reaction, since you guys were the first ones?

TK: I'm not exactly sure when I came to this conclusion, but I still think that why they picked Bainbridge is that I think the government wanted to do a trial run to see if there's gonna be very much resistance or not, and I think, like Bainbridge was a real good place to start because it was a limited amount of people on a limited space, and they could find out if there was gonna be much resistance or not. And I guess that, I guess the Bainbridge people were, they were so timid that they were led like sheep, and I don't think we put up any kind of fuss at all.

TI: When I look at the pictures, there's quite a bit of security for this first one.

TK: Right.

TI: But when I look at the history books or some of the books about this, Bainbridge Island was, was, I guess the U.S. government officials were concerned because there were a couple things. One was the proximity to the naval shipyard.

TK: Right.

TI: If you're concerned about, like spying or sabotage, that would be one reason. The other one was there was a top secret listening post.

TK: Out on Bainbridge, yeah.

TI: And I think that was the one, other one that they were concerned about, so that's, that was what I've read in terms of some of the government documents why they picked Bainbridge.

TK: Yeah, I read that also.

TI: But for you, how did you and your family find out that you had to leave Bainbridge?

TK: Because I guess in early or mid February, after EO 9066 was signed, we heard about the evacuation that might happen, but what we thought in the beginning is that maybe they were gonna only pick up the first generations, Isseis. And we were wondering what we should do. I'm not sure when we found out that they were gonna pick up everyone.

TI: And when your family found out that everyone was gonna get picked up, what did you do with the property, the houses, the nursery, the crops? What happened next?

TK: As far as the property goes, it was leased, so we didn't have any ownership there, and as far as our, what we had in the greenhouse and things, I think we just left it. I don't, I'm not sure if anybody took it over or anything.

TI: So essentially you picked up your personal belongings and kind of walked away from the place?

TK: Yeah, I guess so. Yeah. I'm not sure if my parents, I'm not sure what happened to our, we had a couple vehicles and that was probably the only thing that was worth probably anything, except maybe we had the crops and the greenhouse, and I don't, I still don't know what happened to our, what happened to the personal property we had. Some of it I know that we had, we stored it with our landlord.

TI: Now do you remember, those last days, what school was like for you? I mean, did you, did you have to say goodbye to people or anything like that happen at school?

TK: Yeah. One thing I think was probably a little different from some other location is that when we were gonna get on the ferry there was quite a few of the Caucasian friends that came to see us off.

TI: And were there some people that you knew that came to see you guys off? Like friends of the family or friends from school or anything like that?

TK: I know our landlord was there. I think some of our friends were there. I'm pretty sure that some of my older siblings, some of the students had skipped class to come to see them off.

TI: Yeah, because you mentioned your older brother Ray was a senior in high school.

TK: Yeah.

TI: And so he probably had grown up and gone to school with some of those people since kindergarten all the way to high school.

TK: Right.

TI: And so I'm guessing some of, he had some friends there.

TK: Right.

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