<Begin Segment 12>

TI: So after December 7, 1941, that's a Sunday. Now, I think you said earlier you weren't going to school now? Or were you, were you...

MK: No, I wasn't going to school. We were, we had to work on the farm, so...

TI: So what happened next, though? I mean in the days after, did anything else happen now that...

MK: We were working the farm because we didn't know whether we were gonna get, you know. So farming went as usual and we were selling, we were selling... but this is winter now, so there's no strawberries or no fruit, but we were selling napa and daikon and stuff like that, the Japanese vegetables, and keeping the farm weeded and stuff like that. But when, around, I think it was late January or early February, they confiscated all the cars and the guns and cameras, radios.

TI: Now, why cars? I understand guns and radios 'cause they could be perhaps used, but cars, why cars?

MK: Transportation, I think. So everybody rode around in U drives. But we, I know like some Japanese people had swords, stuff like that, and so my father said, "Well, we're probably gonna get evacuated." So we had a lot of young, I would say in that picture half of them were young Kibeis or immigrants from Japan.

TI: So this is a picture of the co-op, all, and there were men, probably about forty to fifty of them.

MK: Yeah, and at least twenty of them were, just came from Japan as, yobiyosei is what they call, they came to work on people's farms and then they finally bought a little five acre, something like that, now they start building their house. Well, it's really nothing to build because when they started to build all the neighbors would go and they'd put up that house in one day or two days. That was how well they cooperated. But then my father said maybe they better start thinking about not spending all their money because there's going to be, if we get evacuated...

TI: I see. So your father was telling people, "Don't put too much money into the farm right now."

MK: That's right.

TI: Save your cash 'cause you're not sure what's gonna happen.

MK: We don't know what's gonna happen.

TI: Right, that makes sense.

MK: But somebody, somebody turned him in. And so here comes RCMP and they hauled him, hauled him into, we call the compound, and so they took my father. And my father, I guess, was so noisy of yelling and screaming inside the place and kept saying, "Sign this paper says we aren't gonna get evacuated and I'll go and tell them to..." you know. Well, so finally, I don't know how long it was, they came and said, "Come and get your father. He's too noisy."

TI: That's funny. He was such a nuisance to them, he just said, "Take him away."

MK: Yeah. He was screaming and I guess he's banging the, banging the cell and stuff like that.

TI: But what's interesting was that someone turned your father in, so someone in the community probably turned him in, a Japanese turned your father in.

MK: Oh yes, they knew who it was. See, the young people, the young people that knew, they knew that, who turned him in, so they almost killed him. They beat him up mercilessly. So he did not come with the majority of us to Manitoba.

TI: Now, do you know why this person would turn your father's name in? I mean, what reason would he do it? Because he was, in essence your father was right, right?

MK: Right.

TI: I mean, because it would've been good to --

MK: I don't, we haven't the slightest idea. We couldn't figure it out. But so this, this man couldn't, I mean, they weren't, nobody wanted to have anything to do with him, so he went to Alberta and all the rest of us from our community went to Manitoba.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.