<Begin Segment 6>

LH: So at, at the time of 1941 when Pearl Harbor, the news of Pearl Harbor broke out, you were two years old and your family was situated, well-situated on a farm and doing well. Your father was working as jeweler?

FK: He was working for Friedlander's as a salesperson.

LH: Okay, okay. I understand that your father was taken by the FBI after Pearl Harbor.

FK: Yeah, yeah. And as far as I can tell, it must have been some time in, some time in February... early, probably early February. I found some papers at the National Archives in Suitland. There were some papers that said he was arrested because of finding dynamite in the barn and a .22 rifle in the house. The dynamite, I'm sure, was there because of my, it was old dynamite that was left there from my grandparents, from clearing the land and so forth. And that time, at that time probably everybody had some sort of a .22 rifle or something.

But my mother had also said that she thought maybe he was rounded up -- well, also he couldn't prove he was a citizen because he couldn't, they couldn't find his papers and stuff. But she said she thought maybe he was rounded up too because he commuted to Seattle everyday. And because he commuted to Seattle everyday, he was making deliveries for some of the greenhouses. And the greenhouses were on Rich Passage, the passage the ferry now goes through to go to Bremerton, and a lot of the ships and stuff were driving through there. So they thought, they could have thought, he was maybe spying on the ships that were going into the Bremerton shipyard. And also he was selling, his biggest sales accounts would be the Japanese ships that came into port in Seattle, and he would go to the ships and sell jewelry and rings and things to the sailors on the ships. So, he had some contact in that way, too. So, my mother said that maybe that's why they thought he was somebody that might be dangerous. So, I don't have, I don't have any recollections of him other than (being rounded) up. But there were quite a few people on the Island that were, that were (also) taken.

LH: And do you know where he was taken to?

FK: He was taken to Missoula, Ft. Missoula, Montana. And that's, that's something else I know very little about except that one of the other people on the Island, whose father was also taken, had a friend that lived in Missoula and got some newspaper clippings about from (them) about the situation there. And there was also a book written that had some of the stuff about Ft. Missoula in there, so I was able to get hold of that.

LH: Did your father ever mention anything about his experience there in Missoula?

FK: No, he really didn't, not that I know of. And I guess I was just, at that, before he died, I was just not interested in this stuff. So I just never sat down and talked to him about it; and I sure wish I had, but...

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.