<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Let me go to Pearl Harbor now. And what were you doing on that Sunday, December 7, 1941?

MU: I distinctly still remember where I was on the ranch. I was near the ofuro, the bathhouse. I don't know what I was doing. I don't know who told me but I do remember that day that I heard that there's war.

MN: Now you were very young did you understand when they told you Pearl Harbor was bombed, as I think you were twelve at the time?

MU: Yes.

MN: Did it, for you how did you comprehend this?

MU: I had mixed feelings and a feeling of, "Oh, what's going to happen?" Because my mother was communicating with her relatives in Japan very closely. And Japan being her country and my country too, I had a sense of a fear what's going to happen. What's going to happen to us being Japanese and how will we be accepted or treated from the people around because we're Japanese and America is now at war with Japan. So there's a sense of fear and a deep sense for my mother and how she would take it, what will she do, what will happen to us, what will we do. It never came to my mind that we might have to be sent back to Japan, that never occurred to me. But what occurred to me was we're living in America and that I didn't like it. I do remember that. I distinctly remember that day so I must have had quite strong feelings if I remember it to that extent.

MN: Did you go to school the next day?

MU: Yes.

MN: What was school like the next day?

MU: I don't remember anything. I don't remember anything negative. I don't remember what the teacher might have said, if she said anything, I have no recollection. I don't have any recollection of whether it had happened to, my brother was thirteen at that time, if any of my siblings had an uncomfortable situation because of what we heard the day before. I don't recall that at all.

MN: Now did you hear of any Japanese Americans in the local area being picked up by the FBI?

MU: We heard something to that extent. My mother may have mentioned it but as to who and when, I have no recollection.

MN: Now there was this very short period about three weeks where Nikkei families that lived in the... where the government designated as a restricted zone could move out of this military zone into the free zone and your area was still a free zone.

MU: Yes.

MN: Did you see a lot of Nikkei families move into your area?

MU: We had one family move into our home, our house, from San Francisco. They had one daughter, a Nisei, about my older brother's age. They moved in with us, they were our friends that we had met.

MN: So now how many people were living your house?

MU: That added three more in our house besides our family.

MN: Five kids.

MU: And my mother.

MN: And your mother and then the three additional people.

MU: Yes.

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