<Begin Segment 7>

SY: So did your father end up, obviously, having to get rid of the home?

YN: Yes, we had, I'm not sure just how long, but it seems that it's about two weeks or maybe a little bit longer to dispose of our property. We had a couple of vehicles, we had a couple horses, and we had other equipment. We had a dog, we had a horse, and a lot of --

SY: Is that period of time...

YN: -- a lot of crops in the ground.

SY: So that period of time, was it memorable to you?

YN: Well, it was terrible in that we either had to give things away or sell them or ask people to save them, and fortunately Ruth Green Paul volunteered to take some of the things that belonged to my mother and she'll keep it for safekeeping. And we had forgotten about that, and there were others who were very helpful. Our neighbors took us to the train station when we had to evacuate. You know, when we left El Monte High School some of my fellow students who were not of Japanese ancestry said, "Well, we just had to cry," because it was a severing of some friendships. So there was this kind of tearing away just like when families have to have someone depart for some journey somewhere else, but we didn't know where we were going. But it was a terrible time.

SY: So do you remember, so do you have memory of how you felt? I mean, what was the hardest part for you?

YN: Well, it was a very sad time, because first of all, to leave at the end of your junior year in high school is traumatic. Very few people like that transition because you want to be a senior where you're known, and now you're going somewhere where you don't know where you're going actually. So no, it was a very difficult time for us, and I would say it was really difficult for me because I was quite active in El Monte, Union High School. I (was not only) in the Japanese Lions Club, but there was a service club which was an honorary club where the membership is made up of people who have exhibited some good qualities in their life. I was lucky that one of my neighbors became a very good friend. And he nominated me to be in the Lion Squires, and the Lion Squires had a president and officers the first semester and then the spring semester. Well, I was lucky enough to be president during the spring semester of the Lion Squires. So when I had to leave, those people expressed sorrow of my leaving. And I was on the track team. The terrible thing about being on the track team was that our coach thought it was fair enough that the Japanese Americans who live in Arcadia can't come to El Monte so El Monte can't go to Arcadia. There was a five mile limit to where you can go, so if the high school you're playing is more than five miles, you had to stay home, so it was a terrible thing.

SY: So was it just the team went on without you? Or did you --

YN: Oh yes, they had, of course they had to go, and so the only time we can compete was either at home or some track that was less than five miles away. At the time it just seemed so unfair, but people looked at it from different viewpoints.

SY: And do you remember the curfew and the darking out windows? Did you have to do any of that?

YN: No, but there were rumors that there were farmers who would forget to turn off their porch lights and people suspect it's a signal of some kind. And perhaps you heard about the Battle of Los Angeles? Well, there was something going on that caused the antiaircraft to go off, and so we heard all this boom, boom, boom, boom, the shooting and tracers going up and all that. I don't think it was anything, but it put a lot of scare in people that maybe the Japanese were actually trying to land on California soil or something like that.

SY: And that happened, you remember that happening?

YN: Oh yes, I sure do remember. And there are people today who look upon that with a lot of humor because, "You remember that Battle of Los Angeles?" [Laughs] Where they're shooting at phantom targets. But rumor spread and then, of course, the newspapers did a wonderful job of stirring up people, and politicians didn't have a backbone. Even Earl Warren felt that we should be removed, so there were very few people. Fletcher Bowron, who was the mayor of Los Angeles, felt we should be removed. So there were very few that -- the Quakers were the only group that vocally opposed our being incarcerated, and they provided a lot of help. You heard Grace talk about Dr. Robert O'Brien, how he helped with the relocation of Japanese American students. So there was tension in that way, and some businesses, like barbers, having signs out that, "No Japs Allowed" or something like that. But with the kind of propaganda, misinformation that was really bombarding the people all the time and no countermeasures, it's very much like the campaigns today in politics, where you have all this negative stuff going out and then if there is no candidate to counter that, if there is no group of people to counter these false accusations, then people begin to think that must be true. So there were rumors about the Japanese Americans who created an arrow in the sugar cane fields pointing to the way of Pearl Harbor and all this sort of thing. All nonsense. The Japanese Americans we knew, we have met from Hawaii, were just dumbfounded, very, very frightened and disappointed that when they saw the pilots in these airplanes, "My gosh, they look like me," you know? And so many of them wanted to volunteer right away and of course you know that for a while Japanese Americans were classified 4-C, which is "enemy alien," and that's a terrible thing to do to people. Fortunately I wasn't eligible to be classified, but if I were classified like that, I don't know exactly how I would've taken it, because it would've been a tremendous blow. As one mentioned in David Ono's documentary on the 442nd receiving the Congressional Gold Medal, this one fellow said, "Gee, it's just like having someone take your heart out and then spending the rest of your life trying to recover it."

SY: So was your older brother, was he eligible for the --

YN: No, because he was an alien, you see. He was...

SY: Born.

YN: He was born in Japan. And besides, he would not have been eligible because he had a hearing problem and so he could only hear from one, in one ear. I think in Tonda, he lived near the sea and he probably got water in his ear and maybe something else. But anyway, he couldn't hear from one ear.

SY: So did he sort of manage the movement that you, from...

YN: Yes, he and my father, we all helped a bit. My sister would say that I was probably the favored son because she remembers having to work in the fields hard and my father would encourage me to take part in some of the activities in the school, so it was probably unfair. But a young guy, you take these opportunities that come along and do what you can.

SY: So you didn't really have to do too much of the heavy lifting.

YN: Well, as I recall, doing things that, working, knowing that I probably would not like to do this when I grow up because farming is very labor intensive, very hard on your back. So I recall doing some harvesting and, actually, even going out, working in some vineyards near us and picking grapes and things like that too.

SY: When you finally got to camp, was that a relief in some ways for your family, do you think?

YN: No, I don't think it was a relief. It was a terrible blow, actually. Because we had a farm... people had to eat, and we knew that if you grow things people will, even to abide them, and as the war progressed, more and more young people were brought into the armed forces, and so fewer people were working in the farms, that sort of thing. So I think the opportunities would've been greater had we been able to stay. I would say that it was a tremendous blow to my father because he prided himself on being able to provide for us, and taking that privilege away and being locked up and actually not having any meaningful thing to do, he would have nightmares and he fell out of his bunk. We were in this converted stable where the droppings of the animals and dirt and what have you are covered over, straw and everything, covered over with asphalt, kind of rough asphalt, and so when he fell, he fell on his shoulder and he was in the hospital for more than a week. He was right-handed, and he would, after that he would have tremors. He was kind of a broken man. He just was not able to be productive after that, and that's why my younger brother and my sister kind of took charge of taking care of him. He, after a while, the dental work in camp was not as good as it was outside and so he was not able to chew. So when we finally went to Gila, the internment camp there, he had to get special food from the dietician, so my brother or my sister would go and get it for him. He was ambulatory; he'd walk around. But he had these tremors and then he couldn't chew.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.