<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Okay, so this first, this first meeting where the FBI came was before December 7th. Let's next go to December 7, 1941, and why don't you tell me about that day and how you found out about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

MT: We were not a very religious family. We're just, my father isn't, my mother isn't. They're nominal Buddhists, my father is a nominal Zen Buddhist, and, and far as going to church, going to church is fine, Christian church is fine. When we were in Terminal Island, we used to go to church. Me occasionally, my sister would go regularly and we got a penny and we put it into... and gave it. I didn't really want to give it. I'd rather spend that, but you know. And in fact, we lived back to back with this other family, the Izumi family, and the son was my age. They used to go every day. We have a picture yet of what happened. And I used to go to Christmas regularly, Christmas and Easter 'cause they gave you candy. Those are two musts; other days I couldn't care, I could care less. But we have a picture, one Easter, and Kats, Katsumi, one of the sons, was my age, is there with his sisters and my sisters and my brother and I were standing -- this is before it was banned. We're all holding an Easter basket and they're taking picture. I have this tiny, tiny -- well, candy's all gone -- tiny basket and Kats has this huge basket 'cause he goes on a regular, and my sister has a big one, 'cause they go regularly. But I, since I go occasionally I've got this tiny, tiny basket, showed how religious I was. [Laughs] But my folks never, if I was gonna go to church they would always give me the penny if I wanted to go, so there wasn't a case that they opposed it. They just never made it a mandatory thing or a thing that we should do or anything. Never said we should do it, but to go to Christian church was okay. We always went to Buddhist churches for -- aside from the Japanese school -- we went there for funerals and things like that. So religious thing was not something that we did, so we weren't... I went for other reasons when I went to church, other than religion and, and I didn't, the problem with Buddhist churches for me was that in those days everything was in Japanese and I understood most, some of it, not all of it because they would speak in very polite terms and different things and they would, or they would give prayers in, I guess, Japanese Sanskrit or whatever it is supposed to be, so I didn't understand what was going on, whereas in Christian church they, I understood everything they said. Whether I believed it or not was something else, but I, at least I understood what they were saying.

So we, we were just kind of a -- and so we were home that Sunday. None of us went to church; we were home. And it was close to noon when suddenly I get, we get a phone call, and I answered the phone. It was my cousin in Terminal Island and she said, "Did you hear?" I said, "What?" "Did you hear?" I said, "What?" "Didn't you hear?" And she's hyperventilating, she's saying, " Didn't you hear? Did you --" I said, "Wait, Em." Her name was Emiko, so we called her Em. I said, "Wait, wait, wait, Em. Stop, stop, stop. What didn't I hear? What did I hear?" And so she said, "Oh, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor." I said, "Quit kidding." Said, "No, no, no, it's true. Listen to the radio. It really is true." So I knew, because I liked geography, I knew where Pearl Harbor was, so I listened to the radio and sure enough they're talking about Pearl Harbor. Then I turned it to the shortwave to get the Japanese station 'cause we, the year before we had bought this console, a Philco console that had -- in fact, there was a slogan, "No stoop, no squat, no squint," 'cause they had a fairly large dial and it was, it was canted, it was sloped instead of usually it was vertical and you had to look like this. It was sloped and that was a big thing. And so --

TI: I'm sorry, so what was that saying one more time?

MT: Oh, the saying? "No stoop, no squint, no stoop." No, "No stoop, no squint, no stoop." Wait, "No stoop, no squint..." No, "No stoop, no squint," what was that? Now I got it... there's three words. "No stoop... no stoop, no squint." I forgot. I just said it and I forgot what it was. [Narr. note: "No stoop, no squat, no squint."]

TI: Alright. Don't worry about it. That, that's okay.

MT: Yeah, but it's the three. "No stoop, no squint..." Anyway, the dial was sloped and so you didn't have to do that. It was the first console that they, or anything that sloped the dial. And they had shortwave and all those things on it, so we used to listen to shortwave. And anyway, I turned it on and sure enough they're talking about glorious victory in Pearl Harbor, and, "Oh no," you know. So then I told my father about it, and my father says, "No, no, no. It's Germany. It's Germany." I thought that's strange. Why was it Germany? That's the other side. And I thought that, but I didn't think about until later, I thought, oh, it's wishful thinking on his part. He doesn't want, he didn't want Japan to bomb Pearl Harbor, 'cause he was here, he was building up his business, spending, taking everything he earns and throwing it into the business and suddenly Japan's... and he's already had the FBI interrogating him, so he, knowing he was going to go to jail. So when the FBI came later, of course, it was very glum. We didn't know what to do. Listened to the radio, what's going on? And then eight-thirty that evening, knock on the door, I mean the door, door bell rang. I answered it. It was the FBI, wanted to talk to my father. And I told my father, "Some people are here to see you." Well, he was very prepared. He knew, so he had a suit on and put on his overcoat, got his hat, cap, hat and went out with them. And they said, "Oh, well, we just want to talk to him and he'll be back." Never came back, of course, until 1944. This is December 7th at eight-thirty in the evening.

TI: Did the, the FBI agents, did they look through the house during this time period?

MT: No. No. They didn't. So of course we burned everything, so this is the part of the problem that the Japanese had, is that anything that would tie us to Japan, everybody was saying get rid of it, get rid of it, and everybody would burn it. We had a fireplace; we burned all our things in there. And it's too bad because that was part of our history.

TI: Although that calligraphy from the kendo guy, that survived. You didn't --

MT: That survived. There was, lot of things survived, but certain things, letters and stuff, photographs. I think maybe my parents thought nobody could read it. [Laughs]

TI: You mentioned, so you mentioned that your, when your father first heard, it was almost like he didn't want to believe this because he had been building up the business.

MT: I believe so.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.