<Begin Segment 15>

TI: And before we talk more about that, so you mentioned February 19, 1942, Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066, which led to the removal of Japanese and Japanese Americans from the West Coast. And before we talk about leaving, I just want to ask, like you mentioned earlier that you bought your house, what arrangements did you make for your home in Portland?

ES: Well, right away the, is it Wartime Authorities? W, W...

TI: I think back then it was WCCA at that point, and then later on the WRA.

ES: Yeah, WRA. The War Relocation Authorities. They came around and said that they would take care of our home, rent it out, but we could remove anything that we wanted saved to Beacon.

TI: The storage company.

ES: The storage company. And so we did do that, but of course there were a lot of things that we couldn't, we didn't move. We didn't move the refrigerator or stove or anything. And then at that time I had a nurse friend who had just recently got married and so she was looking for a place to stay, because they still hadn't decided where to live. And so they said they would rent our house and keep it up. I said that'd be great because I knew her so well and I knew her parents too, and the parents knew other Japanese in the community. So they came and lived there and everything, I thought, was gonna be great. What do you know? He was drafted into service. He was a plumber, and so of course she couldn't live there by herself in the house, a good size house, upstairs, basement, and so she said she had to move from there. So she had to turn the whole thing over to the War Authorities again. And so then, from then on they just rented it out to anybody that could, that would want a roof over their head, I guess. They didn't ask what they did or was able to do. And so I, the way it sounded they had three different tenants who lived in that house while we were gone, for three years. Well, got back, the house was a terrible mess. Every window in that house had a crack in it. There was a hardwood floor, there was a piece about like that all cut out from the floor. You could see the basement from our living room floor.

TI: Now why would somebody do that?

ES: I don't know. Why?

TI: That doesn't make sense, they would cut into a hardwood floor.

ES: I don't know. And just before that we had the house all wallpapered and everything was just like we wanted it, 'cause we were married in 1940 so we bought this house. And so except that I, my folks, I knew, were gonna have a lot of things to store.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.