<Begin Segment 8>

MN: Now I'm going to get into the war years now. What were you doing on Sunday, December 7, 1941?

BS: That I really recall, because we were in downtown Broadway at a theater, then we came out maybe three or four o'clock, and the headlines, and the newspaper boy, "War! War! Japs bomb Pearl Harbor!" It didn't faze me. I didn't know really what "Japs" were, for one thing. And then Pearl Harbor, what was that? I didn't know, but I sure know now.

MN: So you're walking back on Broadway, did you encounter any hostility?

BS: No, nothing.

MN: Now, at that time, did you know anybody who was picked up by the FBI?

BS: No.

MN: How did the Latino community react to this?

BS: I didn't feel anything negative, nothing. Other than I know I was going to Maryknoll school, it's all Japanese American, basically. So we said, "Oh, let's go down to downtown Broadway and get our pictures taken, so we could get each other souvenir pictures." So to this day I still have those pictures of half of my class at least. So I have the original pictures. Should have brought it.

MN: Did you take these pictures after you found out you had go to into camp?

BS: Yes. Well, we didn't know at that time when, but we went before that, yes.

MN: Now, how did your parents prepare to go into camp? Did they buy new clothes, new suitcases?

BS: Yes, I know clothes, because we went to Little Tokyo. I got a brand-new forest green sweater. And after we were incarcerated in Santa Anita assembly center, one day I came home without it, and I didn't know I lost it because I used to tie it around my waist. And I must have dropped it on the way home, and that was it. Never heard the end of that, because it was a brand-new sweater.

MN: I would imagine, yeah, your mother must have been upset about that.

BS: And really, actually, I cherished it because it seemed like I used to just get hand-me-downs from my brother. Well, that one, I got a brand new sweater of my own. Didn't last too long.

MN: I guess Santa Anita didn't have a lost and found.

BS: No.

MN: Now, what happened to your father's Mercado Plaza grocery store?

BS: Oh, okay. You know, all that was on a lease, because he's a so-called "alien," and he wasn't, because of the law in California, he wasn't able to own property. So he gave up the lease and sold it to a Chinese family, and he couldn't even sell the truck, so he just gave it to them. So that was a big loss there. But then I know he still had some customers that paid for the credit, so we had one of the workers, Granile, go to collect at the Chavez Ravine, and he came to Santa Anita to pay my dad off. But I assume he got a percentage of that, whatever he collected.

MN: I assume something similar happened to your father's hotel?

BS: I don't know about the hotel. I assume they all paid up. The grocery store was on credit.

MN: Do you remember if your family burned books or images of the Tennouheika?

BS: No. I recall we had it, but I never saw it in camp, so I assume they got rid of it, because we had the picture of Tennouheika on a white horse, I always remember that one.

MN: Did you have to leave something that was very cherished by you behind when you went into camp?

BS: No, other than my friends. I felt sorry, I said, gee, I lose my friends, my playmates. And then my classmates were all Japanese American, but I didn't know I would end up seeing them again. But my neighborhood friends, I missed them all.

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