<Begin Segment 8>

SY: So, Takayo, you were nine when Pearl Harbor broke out. And I wonder if you remember anything about that.

TF: I don't have a lot of clear memories about that time. I was always very proud of my Japanese background. I remember talking to some of the neighbor children, and I always felt Japan was so strong. You know, I was really quite Japanese, I think. And so this was really, a real conflict. That's not like Japan was fighting another country, it was fighting where I lived. But I don't remember how or how we got to Fresno Assembly Center. What I remember before though is... it's really kind of painful to think about 'cause it's my father, who was always so quiet. And they had very few possessions, but one of the things he loved was the Japanese music. I remember going out into the farm, and he propped up records that he loved. He loved baseball, and he got the baseball and he broke 'em. And I thought, oh... I don't know that it affected me quite so much then, but thinking about it now, I think, how was he ever going to get those records again? Did he ever get those recordings back? So I remember that. And my sister said, I think, he also buried some Buddhist altar piece or something that he may have had. So that I remember before going into camp. And then I remember we were at Fresno Assembly Center, and I remember filling up our mattress with hay. And all the tops of the barracks were kind of open, so you could hear the other people. We were four girls, my mother and father, we had one end, the end of the barrack, and there was a Japanese girl who had been adopted, and she wore a turban, I think she had lost her hair. But she had been adopted by a Caucasian family, but I didn't understand why she had to be in camp with us.

But everybody who was of Japanese blood, and I see really now, even all my great grandchildren, they have enough Japanese blood. Had they been with me, they would have all been... and they're blond, blue-eyed, you'd never know they belong to me. And so I want them to know what we went through, and I'm always sending them DVDs or things about the camp days, and particularly because my youngest granddaughter, when she was ten or something -- I have three children, and my son kept getting married and divorced, married and divorced and having children. The youngest one, they live in Cincinnati and she knows so little about the Japanese American community. And I don't know that she always saw that much of her father, and one day when I went to visit she asked me a question which startled me and I had to control myself. She said something about "your people," the term "your people." And I had to explain to her, "When you use that term, we're all the same. 'Cause you come from me. It's not like I'm separate, 'your people,' you're Japanese. You have Japanese blood." And after that, she became very interested. So when the grandchildren turn twelve, they can come and visit with me and spend a week with me if their mother agreed. So when it was her turn to come visit me, her mother said, "Well, she'd like to sleep on the floor Japanese-style." I said, "Well, if it's okay with you, I'll take her to Japan, and we can really sleep at my cousin's home, and it will have to be Japanese-style on the floor."

SY: So she got to go to Japan.

TF: She got to go to Japan, and she got to know what "our people" are like. [Laughs] And I got her all made up like a geisha, a maiko, so we have pictures of her looking like that. So I look at that picture periodically, 'cause I have it right on my bureau. I wonder what she thinks.

SY: She's how old now?

TF: She's now eighteen.

SY: She's got that connection now.

TS: Now she's got, now she knows she's got that connection. She may be nineteen. Gosh, I think she's had another year.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.