Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Michiko Frances Chikahisa Interview
Narrator: Michiko Frances Chikahisa
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Skokie, Illinois
Date: June 17, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-cmichiko-01-0015

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Well, let's talk about your family, so what did your father do with the business?

FC: He sold it. I have a receipt where he was selling the business for some five or ten thousand dollars.

TI: And who did he sell it to?

FC: Some other guys that had produce businesses. There were these Italian produce men and there were Greek produce men and Jewish produce men that had these stores along there, so they had buyers. I think a, it may have been a Chinese person that bought it. I'm not sure.

TI: And when, when you sell the wholesale business like that, was he selling lots of the equipment and things?

FC: Yeah. The store itself had these huge scales to weigh produce, and then he had trucks and office equipment, so that's, I think, what he sold.

TI: Okay, so five thousand or whatever doesn't sound like very much for all that.

FC: Nothing. Yeah.

TI: Okay. But then it sounds like he was pretty savvy about not selling the home and things for pennies on the dollar like some people did. He kept it.

FC: Yeah. So we were really fortunate that he wasn't panicked. And because he never got taken to the federal camps like a lot of other men he was able, he kept, the family was intact, so that was a fortunate thing. He was interviewed by the FBI on three separate occasions, but they could find nothing that linked him to Japan in terms of political or alliances. There was a, there was a society, some kind of a dragon society that a lot of Japanese people joined. For some reason my father never wanted to put his money there, and so he never, I remember this woman that used to sell membership was constantly trying to hound my father into putting money in, but he never did, and a lot of the guys got taken because of that membership.

TI: Yeah, because I think about how prominent your father was in terms of his business and he had some money. What's interesting is if, if you had instead, were going to the Buddhist church or something and he put those resources in the Buddhist church, was on kind of the church board, then he'd have been targeted probably.

FC: He would've been, he'd have been gone. Yeah.

TI: But because he was with the Maryknoll, which was more of an American, U.S. institution...

FC: Exactly. In fact, the three times he was interviewed the FBI agents were all Catholics. They were all from the, like Holy Cross College and Boston College, and they were all New Englanders, so he would ask them, "Do you know Father Lavery?" [Laughs]

TI: So he would talk about that. Okay, interesting.

FC: And he said they could find nothing because his connections outside of his business was with this Maryknoll school, which was a Catholic school. And while it was for Japanese students, it was for making them be more Americanized, right?

TI: Right.

FC: So they could find no fault.

TI: Interesting. Yeah, I think that Maryknoll connection probably helped your father.

FC: Yeah, it did. It did, definitely. And the priest, Father Lavery, especially was very supportive, especially 'cause in camp, in Santa Anita my sister got sick.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.