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MN: Now I want to ask you a little bit about Pearl Harbor. And the day Pearl Harbor was bombed, Sunday, December 7, 1941, how did you hear about the news?

CO: I cannot give you a specific memory. I know that on the day that it happened, I don't think we knew. It was a regular farm day, so everybody was working. And if we had a radio... we must have had a radio. But it's just that the family was not particularly listening to the news on the radio and stuff. Because at that point, it was a pretty much Japanese-speaking family that we were in at that time. But I think maybe the next day I went to school and they were talking about it at school. And I think within our community, they must have talked about it a lot. Anyway, then... although it didn't affect us personally. Like nobody called us out at school, nobody picked on us or anything. But as time went on, some of the farmers took their kids out of school so they could work on the farm. That's my memory, but I was so little that I just kept on going to school, so it didn't affect me personally.

MN: Did you hear of any Japanese Americans being picked up by the FBI shortly after the bombing?

CO: Not... Issei, a few Issei men, but not very many from our community. The only name that sticks in my mind is Mr. Noguchi, that's all.

MN: And at that time, when you heard Mr. Noguchi was picked up, what were you being told of why he was picked up?

CO: I guess there was a sense of fatalism within the community, that, "Well, okay, that's Japan, our homeland, so that doesn't look so good for us, does it?" And so I think they were not too surprised when a few of the older men were picked up. But why? Just because they were Japanese, I guess that's the way we figured. I mean, they didn't pick up a whole lot of people, so it didn't seem so upsetting to the whole community. Probably for the Noguchi family, but not the rest of us. And of course, we would take care of the Noguchi family in that case because they were part of our community.

MN: So there was no rumor like, "Oh, so and so might be a spy"? Nothing like that?

CO: No, I don't remember anything like that.

MN: So what did your family do with the pictures or books or anything that was connected to Japan?

CO: Yeah, my memory is that they did burn some stuff and I think bury some stuff, but you know, we still have surviving pictures, so they saved some things in one old trunk, which a kindly old white grocery man let us store some stuff with him, so I know that trunk survived. But I think they were... we didn't have a whole lot of Japanese stuff like many families did. Like Girls Day stuff or swords, we were not samurai family, so we didn't have any of that stuff. My impression is that my father was not so pro-Japan as many of the others were at the time. So... and I guess we were nominal Buddhists, but I don't think we had a shrine or anything in our house. I don't know, there just was kind of like indifference to that kind of stuff within our household.

MN: Now, once you learned you had to go into camp, what did your family do with the larger furniture?

CO: There wasn't much of any value, as I recall. And there was one day when I guess word was put out that we were, the group was getting rid of stuff. So a lot of people came, and I guess a lot of it was sold. Cars... we had farm equipment, so I guess that was all sold, too, I don't really recall. But it's not like we had precious... well, I've heard a lot of stories and other people had to sell grand pianos and stuff for just a few bucks. We didn't have anything that valuable, so it wasn't so traumatic to us. We were poor people. I don't remember that we had any fancy dish sets or anything. We were not like the city folk.

MN: But your house, what did you do with your house?

CO: Just left it there. Just left it there.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.