<Begin Segment 8>

SY: But during the period between December and April, there was that...

HS: Curfew from February. After eight o'clock you had to keep the lights shaded, couldn't go anywhere after eight o'clock.

SY: So how did that affect you as a high school student? Did you have to stop all your activities?

HS: You had to. You were, you were not allowed to go more than five miles away from your home. After eight o'clock, if you were gonna travel, you just better be darn sure that you had a good reason. If you got caught after eight o'clock... like that Fred Korematsu, he violated that just on purpose.

SY: But you, you stayed home, and did you have to pull the blinds and...

HS: Yeah. You had to black out as much as possible, shade your lights, keep the shades down and blinds drawn. But they were so afraid that a bomber would come by with all the lights on, so the city was blacked out as much as possible.

SY: Did you remember that, that period of time very clearly? Do you remember being at home, staying inside?

HS: Oh yeah. Just listened to the radio, that's all you could do. But everything was really quiet.

SY: And did you, I assume you had to stop all your basketball games, then.

HS: Yeah. Everything stopped short. But there was one incident where, San Pedro, they started, we didn't even know there was anti-aircraft guns there, and I forget what month it was, but they'd start firing a hundred anti-aircraft shells, and so everybody thought that it was a plane that'd come. But what happened was it was a weather balloon, and on radar I guess it showed up as an unidentified object, so San Pedro and Fermin Point and all that, they had anti-aircraft guns in there shootin' away. And the, I think the most damage came from the shells coming down, falling back to earth. But one Japanese submarine did come off the coast of Santa Barbara and fired about three or four shells. They just came up off, then fired some shells off the Santa Barbara coast. And that was the sum total of any activity. I don't know if, two-man submarine, I think one came and they found one off the coast.

SY: Do you remember that at the time, or is that things that you learned afterwards?

HS: It came out in the papers. We were still taking the Times.

SY: So you would read about it. Your family would read about these things. And so your father read the paper every day, then?

HS: Yeah. He would, he had to learn English pretty fast because being in the, waiting on customers and stuff.

SY: So did it affect his business when the, Pearl Harbor happened?

HS: Business really fell down, but we still managed to keep up until about a week before, and then we closed the shop down the week before evacuation.

SY: And do you remember much about that period where you had to, after you found out you were going to be evacuated, what you had to do?

HS: Yeah, well, we couldn't sell anything. Nobody was a buyer. We just packed up, and in fact, we were only allowed one suitcase. Heck, I didn't have much clothes when I went to camp.

SY: Was he leasing that, he must have been leasing that property that, the florist and the house?

HS: He was renting. It's a month to month rent.

SY: So you just closed it up and --

HS: Just closed it up.

SY: And you didn't have a suitcase. How did you, did you, how, what did you, do you remember what you decided to take when you left for camp?

HS: Well, I didn't have much to take, so it was just... they had these bamboo cases like Mom had, she probably came from Japan with it, that she packed the bedding and stuff like that. See, all we took was bedding and clothes. So all of our clothes were all packed in together with all my brothers' stuff, so that's all I remember. I don't even remember packing anything.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.