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BN: So there was this period of shock, very quiet, what kind of transpires in the next days and weeks? Did things slowly kind of come back to normal?

JK: Yeah, although I must say that nobody questioned us directly. People were very supportive, we continued to have, our customer base (which) was primarily Japanese. But at the same time, we had haoles, a lot of haole customers who would bring their dressmakers with them and they would select a pattern and buy the fabric, amount that they needed, etcetera. So they continued to support us. I'm sure there were some who questioned it at the beginning, but we were never shunned. Because in some families where the men were taken away, even the Japanese families would not associate with them for fear of being taken away themselves, but we never experienced that.

BN: Was there, I know some of the businesses changed their names to take out the Japanese names. Did you do any of that, change the sign or anything like that?

JK: Well, I don't know what happened, but we had two names to begin with, Hawaii Importing Company and Hawaii Yunyuu Gaisha. So more use was made of Hawaii Importing Company. But the interesting thing is my mother always (before the war) wore a kimono every day. She had to quickly have dresses made, and then she had a hard time buying shoes because she had extremely narrow feet. And at that time, the shoe stores did not have different (widths), they just (stocked) the middle (widths). And she had high arches, so she suffered. But she could not wear slippers like she used to.

BN: So that was one change.

JK: That's one big change that I noticed.

BN: You mentioned before that she kind of, even though there wasn't a strong pressure to not speak Japanese, that she still...

JK: The customers spoke Japanese, so there was no shame in talking Japanese. But (during) the war, she tried. But, you know, you can't really communicate, and they still talk in Japanese.

BN: What happened with your school? Did school just go on?

JK: School was closed after -- you're talking about schools, right?

BN: Yeah.

JK: Okay. Japanese schools never reopened after that for a long time. I was an adult by the time they reopened. But I was at St. Andrews Priory then, and I think about February we went back to school. And I found that our class size was much smaller. We (had) small classes to begin with, but many of our fellow students were boarders. They had come from the neighbor islands. So the neighbor island people were sent home, and they never came back. And then the Chinese people could go to work at Pearl Harbor. Japanese, nobody would hire us, so we had to go to school. So our graduating class was something like thirty-five. It was small to begin with, but it really shrank.

BN: And for the store, you were able to more or less continuously keep...

JK: Yeah, because we had the selection and the reputation. I think that helped. And the jobbers were (partial to us) because (we) bought a lot before (the war). There was a scarcity of goods because, primarily because of shipping. They would give (us) first crack at (them). So all in all, we were very fortunate under the circumstances.

BN: I've heard some stories that certain businesses actually benefitted from the war in the sense that you had all of these war workers and army military personnel and so forth. Did you get any of that or not so much?

JK: Yeah, we had some. We had sailors coming in with gypsy fortune tellers. They would go (to) Hotel Street. There were lots of gypsy fortune tellers, and they would befriend them. (They were) somebody to talk with. (So the sailors would) bring them to the store and they'd buy yards of yardage because (the gypsies) just wrap (the fabric) around. We had that kind of customers that were different from our usual. But the first day that the store opened, and I think it was the third or fourth day after Pearl Harbor, there was a run on khaki and Indian Head to make blackout curtains, and canvas bags -- to make evacuation bags -- that kind of stuff. I am so grateful that I (was able to live) through such an interesting time without being negatively affected.

BN: And again, some would say, because Aala was its own little world, you had a little bit of buffer, it sounds like.

JK: Well, you know, like the Iwaharas were right across from the railway station, and the guys who needed tools and things, that's the first store and (it was) conveniently located, I think they did (a) booming business, too. I've never asked that question directly. And they had an inventory upstairs. I often used to wonder, "How come the floors don't sink?" Because (their goods were) heavy. And they had stacks and stacks of it.

BN: So were there any sort of incidents in either your store directly or others in Aala in terms of vandals or any of that kind of thing that took place right after Pearl Harbor or during the war?

JK: You know, I can't recall any negative incidences. Not ever being called a "Jap" to my face. And I have not heard, because there were people who were taken in, but that's another story. But the stores themselves were patronized. For one thing, we had the reputation in that Aala building -- all of us -- had good merchandise, not shoddy stuff. And there was that reputation. Nothing real negative that I can think of.

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