<Begin Segment 11>

BN: So what happened in the succeeding days?

JK: Well, okay. Next morning, my mom went to the market because she thought, "Well, I'd better have some food." And we never used to eat canned goods, because the market was right behind. You could go every day for fresh fish, fresh beef, fresh vegetables. So she said, "I'd better put in some supplies." She went, and there she heard that two of our neighbors had been taken in on December 7th in the morning. They were successful businessmen, and very active in the community -- Mr. Taichi Sato, and Mr. Taketo Iwahara. And then I thought, "Hmm. My mom was a successful businesswoman, she had also been the president of the Fujinkai, the women's group at the temple. Are they gonna take her?" Then I worried. I'm the oldest, I got two younger siblings, what am I gonna do? Can I support them? Because obviously we didn't have a big bank account that we could rely on. But I'm only sixteen. Would my uncle let me work in the store and pay me the same as (he) paid my mom? She had years of experience, I have none. And that kind of thing raced through my mind. And then what if they come at night on December 7th? If they came by air as they did in the morning, we have to run downstairs into the store and hide under the counters. But if they landed -- and there was all that fear on December 7th, the night of December 7th of landing, and we were a couple of blocks away from the waterfront. Now, if they were to enter, they would enter through the store. Then we got to find someplace upstairs to hide. I mean, seemingly ridiculous worries, I worried. So it was a long, long night. The streets are all dark and quiet except once in a while you'd hear a speeding car, and then somebody's, "Halt." It's very scary. The first few nights were really very scary nights.

BN: Was there enforced blackout?

JK: Complete blackout. And on Sundays we used to have, at Aala Park, there was a bandstand, and we used to have Filipinos put on programs. I still remember the name, Sally Decoscos (who) used to sing. And you know, no more Sally Decoscos, all quiet. And it's an eerie feeling. And when you hear the word, "Halt, who goes?" It's even worse.

BN: Were the ministers from your temple also...

JK: Well, I didn't know at that time that they had been incarcerated. The first night I didn't know it. Actually, what I heard about was the fellow neighboring merchants had been taken in, and that's what made me worry about my mom.

BN: Did you get visits from FBI?

JK: Well, the ad -- and here again, Mr. Hino, who had worked on the ad, and my mom, were never confronted face to face. They did come to investigate. They just ran upstairs to our living quarters, opened up all the drawers, threw out stuff, left it like that, and left without a word. But they had inquired about the two of them all the neighbors, but they never questioned them directly. 'Cause that ad really provoked them.

BN: Tell us about that.

JK: The ad was an ad that was put into the Star-Bulletin and the Advertiser, and they were two separate papers at that time, a few days before December 7th. And the ad says, "Fashions by the yard," at the top, with a little cloud-like design, and then a listing of the merchandise with their prices. Well, creative minds of people... and I don't want to say it this way, but it must have been some military wives whose husbands were either killed or who had to be deployed, and they figured out the cloud was a message that they would arrive by air. "Fashions," you take away the "F" and it sounds like "actions." "By the yard," Pearl Harbor naval yard. So that they were would be... and prices, anyway, you add the numbers and you come out to seven. So it means on the seventh... and they added up a lot. And then at the end was one that (word) Yippie, and it means banzai. [Laughs] But they investigated all of that, and they found out that they were all registered names, that the manufacturer of the fabrics had... they had registered with (the office in charge), so it wasn't our making. But that kind of stuff caused a lot of traffic into the store, people coming, and people we never saw before coming, mostly haoles. "May I see," some kind of fabric. They named the fabric, and we showed them the fabric and they said, "Thank you," and they walked away without buying (anything). We had a lot of that kind of traffic. And at first, we didn't know. My mom and Mr. Hino didn't know until they heard the neighbors that FBI and the Naval Intelligence (were) asking questions about their patriotism. Both of them were Japanese citizens, ineligible for American citizenship.

BN: But you said they were never questioned directly.

JK: Yeah, but not directed at them face to face.

BN: So Mr. Hino was not picked up either?

JK: No.

BN: When did you actually find out about the interpretation they had...

JK: Well, I got it in detail long after the war. I had some inkling about it and what had happened, and the neighbors told us, "Hey, they came to investigate this and that. I had to put away things that they had searched through and found nothing. So, you know, you can put those two things together. But after the war, I think it was a book, Hawaii's War Years, Gwenfread Allen, and in there the ad is there. Wow, big deal. [Laughs] And then what people said, were saying, made sense. But you know, when you add numbers, you come to any number that you want. When you pick out words Shantussa, for example, was one of the fabrics. It ends in U-S-S-A. So that's the kind of...

BN: It has to mean something.

JK: Yeah. So Tip High, (T ends) in P and (High) begins in H. "Pearl Harbor." [Laughs] It seems funny, but, you know, creative minds.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.