<Begin Segment 3>

MN: I'm going to get into the war years now. On December 7, 1941, which was a Sunday, what happened to your father?

TN: I guess the FBI questioned him. Might have been at, work at Saji, I'm not sure. But I don't remember all this, but from what my mother and all them said, he was kept, detained at work overnight and all day the next day or something along with a bunch of other people. Eventually they let him go, so he came back home.

MN: Do you remember if the atmosphere in the family changed on that day or the day after?

TN: I don't remember any of that. The same old stuff, I think.

MN: So when the government announced that all West Coast Japanese Americans had to go into camp, what did your family do with their belongings?

TN: Well, some of it they stored with the landlord, this Russian guy. I forgot his name. And the rest, I guess people came around from all over buying stuff off of Japanese that were desperate to sell anything. So I think we sold our stuff for ten cents on the dollar, or my father did, including a new car which he had just bought. Sold it for about a hundred dollars. So there were scavengers coming from all around.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.