<Begin Segment 7>

SY: And then when the war broke out, when... can you describe what happened? Do you remember when Pearl Harbor...

YM: Well, I remember being in church and after we, the service was finished we happened to be sitting in the front of the church and, outside, since the rectory was adjacent to the church one of the priests' sons went home and then he heard it on the radio so he came right back to the church to tell us what had happened. But there was only a couple of us sitting there, and I don't remember what reaction we had or what, but that's the way we, I found out about what had happened.

SY: And did you go home and tell your parents? Or how did they find out?

YM: I'm sure I went home, but I just don't recall what the reaction of any of that was at the time. I don't.

SY: Do you remember if you knew what, where Pearl Harbor was?

YM: Probably not. [Laughs] But I know it involved Japan.

SY: Right.

YM: We don't know what it meant, you know. Not a sophisticated as a twenty-year-old. Well, I was, I guess nineteen or so, out of high school. I don't remember.

SY: You had been in trade school for, at that time for how long?

YM: Yeah, I was in trade school and then I went there about a year, and they limited us to what we could, what classes we could take because it was one of those schools where they have an employment office and after, after you have your courses you could apply, and apparently they found it hard to place Japanese.

SY: That's what they told you?

YM: Uh-huh, so that's what we heard, so there were people, we used to always hear how hard it was to get into that school. Some had applied and never were ever called. So this girlfriend and I decided, well, we'll register there and then we'll wait and see. We don't know when we'll be called so we'll go to City College, so we were going to, we registered at City College and, lo and behold, we were accepted. For just two days we tried to do both, went morning to City College, went afternoon to classes at the trade school. We figured it's just not gonna work out, so we dropped City College and we stayed at the trade school.

SY: And do you remember the name of it, the...

YM: It was called Frank Wiggins Trade School. And, like I said, today it is called Trade Tech and it's, the Wiggins was like a high school level, but Trade Tech is, you get your AA there. So then the kind of, since they limited us to whatever we could take, and we would finish, and there were many more courses we could've taken, so then I went to, in Japanese-town there was a lady who was teaching dressmaking, so I went there. And while I was there my girlfriend that I worked, I was with at the trade school, we had to partner in one of the subjects, so she went to work -- she had a job -- and she noticed that all these people would go to the personnel to recommend other students, so she decided that she'd go up there and recommend me. So I got a call from this place in, it was on Rodeo Drive, it was a place called Howard Greer, and he was one of the Hollywood designers. And that must've been in October of '41, around October, and I was there maybe six weeks or two months or something like that, and then was December 7. When that happened, I don't know whether it was the next day or the two, three days later, but anyway, we were fired. We were let go, and there were other, about two other Nisei girls that were working there. I didn't know them, but we all had to go, leave. So even then I don't remember if I was shocked or whether I expected it or what, whether... I don't really remember. [Laughs]

SY: You reported for work, though.

YM: Yeah, I know.

SY: And then they just told you...

YM: Uh-huh, I guess we got called to the office and we were told.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.