<Begin Segment 6>

BN: So on December 7th...

HM: I decided I was too tired, (yes), I was too tired. So I guess Sunday school must have been not like a regular school. It's, I think, optional, you can come if you want to.

BN: What are your memories, actually, of December 7th?

HM: Well, I think my most vivid memory is seeing the FBI come for my father late in the afternoon. I didn't really know what was happening, but I was frightened, and because they came with guns, two men came with guns pointed. And he had just finished doing some yardwork, and I guess was coming (...) into the house, but they wouldn't allow him to come in. And so he had on geta, and they said they were going to take him. But I guess they allowed him to change his geta into shoes, so my mother had to bring his shoes and socks out to him so that he could put them on outside of the house. They wouldn't allow him to even come in to change his yard clothes. So I do remember that. But as far as the war, I didn't know what was going on.

[Interruption]

BN: At the time of December 7th, were you living somewhere else now 'cause you weren't at the store?

HM: Yes. In, I think it was around third grade when I started St. Andrews, my father bought this house in Makiki, and it was a large house with a one-acre yard. And that's where he was doing yard work, because he loved to do yard work, and that was the only day he could do it, Sunday was his day off. And so I do remember that house. And my friends remember that house. But they did do a lot of entertaining, and they were able to do that being in that house. So when the FBI came, they did come to that house to pick him up.

BN: And then you were inside while some of this was going on.

HM: Yes, I was inside, my mother and I were inside. Larry was helping my father in the yard, so he remembers coming in. But he does remember the FBI coming, too, but he was doing yardwork that day, too, helping, and then he said he came in to take a shower, and then he saw the FBI. But I was indoors at that time.

BN: And then they took him?

HM: They took him, and (I) never saw him after that for the rest of the war years. So...

BN: Did you know where he was? I mean, were you completely in the dark?

HM: No, I was too young to even realize, but that's why I didn't know what camps he had been in. So when I spoke to Janie, she looked it up and then she gave me this -- oh, and he was in the Group One. Group One went to Sand Island and then all these other camps. But I guess he was able to write letters home in Japanese, so he did. But I didn't read the letters or anything.

BN: Because they were in Japanese?

HM: (Yes), they were all in Japanese.

BN: Were you able to write to him?

HM: Not really because I wasn't that fluent. Having been to Japanese school, but not that fluent in writing.

[Interruption]

BN: Did you actually remember seeing, on December 7th, the...

HM: Planes.

BN: ...the planes?

HM: Not really, no. I don't remember that part. But I do know that something was going on. And I guess... well, I mean, just from listening to the radio and all that. They didn't, I don't think the planes flew anywhere near in Makiki anyway. But we just heard through the radio that something was... because of war. And I didn't know what was going to, what was going on. But my husband on the other hand remember seeing the planes, because he was in Wahiawa near Schofield.

BN: When we were talking before, you were mentioning that you had a friend who was injured from antiaircraft fire.

HM: Yes, yes. She lived near the Japanese school.

[Interruption]

HM: Then the missile fell right near my friend's home. She lived near the Japanese school in Nu'uanu, and that killed her brother.

BN: So this is the school, this is the school you went to?

HM: The Chuo Gakuen, the Japanese school.

BN: So had... you could have been there, because you were too tired to go that day.

HM: Yes, I wasn't there that day. But this is all what I had heard. But definitely my friend lost her arm. She's armless.

BN: Was the school destroyed or damaged, badly damaged?

HM: No. I think the missile fell in the yard. In that way, I guess, the buildings were not destroyed. In fact, I think all the Japanese schools were taken over by the state government.

[Interruption]

HM: During the war, my brother and mother and I were the only ones left, because Barney, in the meantime, had been drafted in the army. So he was with the group called 1399 Engineers, he was in that. So only three of us were living in that big house in Makiki.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.