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TI: And so what I thought we would do is, for your interview, I really wanted to go focus on the wartime years. And so a good place to start would be December 7, 1941, when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. So I wanted to ask you, on that Sunday, where were you and how did you hear about this?

KG: I was at a Japanese school party, actually. And it was on a Sunday, and it was shocking. We were shocked. My one brother was ready to go off and fight, I mean, he was so very upset. He was very patriotic. Actually, my parents came with the idea of staying in this country, and they emphasized my father, especially emphasized that it was important that we be Americans and go along with what we learned in school. That was very important to him. He never, neither of my parents went back to Japan, they had no intention of going back.

TI: And so Charlie, who was about, probably eighteen or nineteen years old, your older brother, because you were about sixteen?

KG: Yeah.

TI: So he would have been eighteen or nineteen. So when he heard, he wanted to actually go fight against the Japanese.

KG: He wasn't too... he had a job after school, and so he was busy in that world. But my other brother, Ish, was, he was very patriotic and was very, very upset over what Japan had done.

TI: Oh, I see. So it was your younger brother.

KG: Yeah. And he never, the oldest brother had suffered a severe leg injury when he was a child, so that he never attempted to join the army, whereas my other brother did. He was... first chance he got, why, he joined the 442nd.

TI: Got it, okay. And so he was actually too young at that point, he was like about fifteen years old when the war first started? But later on, he became older, right?

KG: No, he was older. Both my brothers are older than I.

TI: Oh, okay, I misunderstood. So Ish...

KG: But he's a year older than I.

TI: A year older, got it. Got it. Okay, good, I'm glad you clarified that. Okay, so he, at this point is seventeen, almost eighteen years old.

KG: Yeah.

TI: Okay, got it. So going back to that Sunday, you're at a Japanese language school party. And so how many people were there, kind of set the stage. It was kind of like a...

KG: It was a private school, and I have no idea. But I guess we heard about it on the radio, and that was really distressing, just the idea that, what Japan had done, and we just couldn't imagine.

TI: Do you recall any reaction from the teachers at school?

KG: No, we just went home. We were so upset, that we just couldn't believe what had happened. Well, we never were... we didn't get involved in politics a whole lot, and what went on never really concerned us. I think we were all so involved with school, etcetera, that we just didn't think in terms of what was going on nationally or internationally. I guess part of it is the age, too, that we didn't really pay a whole lot of attention to what went on.

TI: That makes... I mean, you were a teenager.

KG: Yeah.

TI: You know, when you mentioned you were in Japanese school, at this point, how good was your Japanese? How many years had you studied?

KG: I studied for years, and I hated every minute of it. [Laughs] Because I had to go after school, regular school, and I never did any outside homework for the Japanese school, because that wasn't important. What I concentrated on was American school. I went to Japanese school because this family, this teacher talked us into it, and then she contacted our parents. She wanted to start a Japanese school, so she started a private school. Both of my brothers got out of it. My oldest brother got a job after school, so the heck with Japanese school. My other brother, the younger one, played football, so he had a good excuse not to go. I couldn't get out of it. I had no excuse, but I hated every minute of it because I had to go after regular school.

TI: Yeah, that's kind of a common story amongst a lot of the Niseis, especially because they had to go after school or on weekends, and it was really something they didn't look forward to. So when you, going back to December 7th, and so you heard about this at Japanese language school, then you went home. Do you recall any reaction from your parents?

KG: I don't remember except that they were all worrying, "What going to happen?" Something's going to happen to us, but we didn't know what.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.