<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Did you remember when Pearl Harbor happened? Do you remember that?

DI: Vaguely. We knew that Japan declared war, and we knew we were being noticed as looking like the enemy. So for the first time, I realized we're different from the rest of the people. And it was rather uncomfortable. It was just a matter of a couple months, but even getting our final grades from the teachers, it was uncomfortable because we got stared at taking our report cards to be graded, each class, they would give us our final grades, and because we didn't finish out the quarter, some of the teachers wouldn't give us our grades; they'd give us an "incomplete." It all depended on the teacher that we had. So some of them were very prejudiced, or else they're going by the book, I don't know what. But we turned in our report cards and then we came home. And then my parents were all set to leave. I was in such shock, I thought, "For heaven sakes." But in those days, we were not taught to question our parents' decision, so I just went along. I didn't question anything. I was never taught to question what my parents told me; I just acquiesced to it and said okay, and I did what they said. And we knew it was a very difficult time for them, and so we just went along.

And to this day, I really don't know which cars we took. I know we took a big truck with everything loaded. We must have taken either the pickup or the sedan, I don't know which, 'cause we had more than one car that we traveled across Nevada with. My father's nephew-in-law had gotten a Mormon farmer to sponsor us. They needed farm labor in Utah. All their boys had gone to war, and so he recommended his uncle -- this was my father -- who was a farmer and would know what to do on the farm. And so my parents agreed to go, and so he made contract with a Mormon farmer to take us in. They had housing for us. So we traveled across the country just towards the end of March when you were still free to evacuate on your own.

TI: Do you know much about why your dad decided to do this, to leave?

DI: Well, we didn't want the government to, I guess, round us up. And then when this nephew said, "We have a chance to go across country and continue farming under the Mormon farmers," that's his occupation, so he acquiesced and said yes and went.

TI: So on your trip, you...

DI: I didn't question it.

TI: It was your family and who else was with you when you, who else was with you on this trip to Utah? It was your family and...

DI: Let's see, our family and the Nakamura family, that was his nephew-in-law, Fred Minoru Nakamura, and his wife Miyo, his two children, Stanley and Susan. And then halfway through Nevada we acquired the Sugimoto family, who had split up from their caravan. They were headed towards Colorado, but the younger brother had an argument with the older brother and he decided to join us and go to Utah instead. So we had the three families, the Nakamuras, the Kobayashis and Sugimoto. So we went to Orem, Utah, which is right next to Provo, where BYU is located.

TI: Oh, before you talk about Orem, what happened to the family farm back in Mountain View?

DI: Oh, the family farm, we had Filipino workers who came annually, and two of them, they came every year. And they, we turned, my father turned the farming operation over to them because they were familiar with the farm and the equipment and what we did. And therefore they stayed in our house, and the seasonal workers would be put up in the barrack that was on the property. And so the two Filipino men took care of the farm all during the war years, and they lived in our house and took care of it and the garden. And Mr. Peacock oversaw everything, I guess, financially, the contracts, etcetera. So they were there until war was over, and they knew we were coming back and so they left before we came back.

TI: So you took off and you traveled, I don't know how many days it took to get to Orem, do you know?

DI: Gee, I don't know how many days we took. Those days are like a blur.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright &copy; 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.