<Begin Segment 14>

MN: Now I'm going to get into the war years. You were still at the Shonien when Pearl Harbor was attacked?

MY: Yes.

MN: How did you hear about that news?

MY: I guess we must have heard it on the radio. But when I went to school, nobody would consider that I was a Japanese. They considered me an American citizen like anybody else, so I never felt prejudiced because I was a Japanese.

MN: What was your reaction when you heard that Pearl Harbor was attacked?

MY: I thought, "Boy, they're stupid." I mean, how can they possibly win against a country like the U.S.? But I don't know if they were provoked or whatever but I mean actually we thought, boy, how stupid can that be. I imagined most people probably felt that way.

MN: Did the FBI come to the Shonien after Pearl Harbor?

MY: Yeah, the first thing they did was picked up Mr. Kusumoto and took him in that December 7th. That night they came, picked him up, took him in, and I never saw him after that. He was taken to a camp in Montana, I think. I'm not positive, but he was there and he got sent back to Japan and I never heard about whatever happened. I just know because when he was in Shonien he adopted a girl that came because she had malformed fingers. So he adopted her and she... I saw her later after the war, after she came back. She went to Japan eventually and went to China and started orphanage and things because of the father, I guess. But she got married eventually, came back to the U.S., so we would go visit her. So I remember she must have passed away about ten, twelve years ago.

MN: And you found out from her what happened to Mr. Kusumoto.

MY: Yeah, pretty much.

MN: Did he pass away in Japan?

MY: He passed away in Japan, yeah.

MN: How did you feel when you saw the FBI taking Mr. Kusumoto away?

MY: We really didn't see him. They came at night and we were pretty much unaware of it. Just the next day we heard that he had been picked up, taken away.

MN: Did the atmosphere at the Shonien change after this?

MY: Not really too much. I guess we... pretty much innocent. It's not like I wonder what's going to happen.

MN: And you mentioned that the next day on Monday, nobody treated you differently at school?

MY: No, I don't think they treated me any different.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.