<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So that's December 7th, let's talk about December 8th, now it's Monday. What was it like in school for you?

TT: See, that I don't remember too much either. We just went to school, and people maybe talked about it. But we had, you know, we had Chinese people in our class, we had Germans, we had Italians, and a lot of Jewish people, and they couldn't figure out why we would be, feel so bad about it. Because they said, "We're all the same, we're all Americans." I said, "That's what we thought, too," but it wasn't. Because as things progressed, that we were more segregated. And so then we ended up quitting school and staying home.

TI: Was this quitting school before the orders showed up in terms of having to leave?

TT: Yah.

TI: So you left even...

TT: I don't know, but I mean, everything led up to the fact that they were gonna move us out.

TI: But the quitting the school part, was that decided by the family that you shouldn't go to school anymore, or were all Japanese...

TT: I think all the Japanese were slowly starting to do that, because they knew that we would have to get rid of our things, we'd have to decide what we're gonna take. We didn't know where we were going.

TI: At school, did they ever have... did the teachers or principal, or was there an assembly that kind of talked about the war or anything else?

TT: Well, see, they probably did that afterward. See, I don't remember too much about what happened at school or with people in those days. Because you know, it's something that if it happens, it happens, and we just hear it, and that's it. We're very carefree, I think.

TI: Now, did you start seeing the signs of war in terms of was there things happening in Seattle that you can remember that all of a sudden changed after December 7th?

TT: That's something I don't really remember.

TI: Things like blackouts, do you remember, like, putting your...

TT: Yah, we used to have to pull our shades down because the blackout was at a certain time. And we didn't dare put our lights on or peek outside. We didn't go outside after a certain time.

TI: Do you remember the curfew when Japanese had to be in their homes by...

TT: Yah, because my mother, our parents would say you can't go out because of the war, that we have the curfew. And, see, they stopped the Japanese schools.

TI: Yeah, so I was going to ask you that. So let's go back to December 8th. So normally after regular school you'd go to Japanese language school. What happened on December 8th? Was there Japanese school?

TT: No, there wasn't, because they closed it. My mother went down there, and she was the only teacher that checked in, but they said no, there was no school. And I saw her name on the register for that day. And I've read things where they say that they had Japanese school on the 8th but they didn't, because they had already closed it.

TI: Now on December... right after December 7th, the FBI started picking up people in Seattle, Japanese the Isseis, many of them were community leaders or Japanese language school teachers, people that like. Were you aware of any of your parents' friends or people that were getting picked up by the FBI?

TT: Yah, people that had real good jobs or things like that, we knew that something was happening. And I think my mother had some money at the Sumitomo Bank, and that was one thing, she tried to get money out, but she couldn't. I think they froze everything.

TI: Right, they froze all bank accounts.

TT: Yah. So I don't know if they ever got that money back.

TI: Yeah, after a certain period of time, they allowed small withdrawals. But initially they froze the banks. Was your mother or your parents ever concerned about possibly being picked up by the FBI as others were being picked up?

TT: No, because my mother was just a teacher, so they didn't bother women teachers. It was more the men that they were interested in. And my father was just a truck driver, so he didn't get called in.

TI: And so as the weeks started going by, eventually people find out that the Japanese are going to have to leave Seattle. What kind of preparation did the family do to get ready?

TT: Well, then we had to get typhoid shots. We had to go and have shots, because they didn't know where we were going to be sent. And so, of course, we did what we were told and went.

TI: And when you say typhoid shots, did you just go to the hospital or did you...

TT: No, they had a place where we were all going.

TI: Do you remember where that was?

TT: No, but I remember getting those shots on here.

TI: Yeah, so that wasn't...

TT: And at that age, you think, oh, this is crazy. Why do they want to do that? Where are we going?

TI: And how about your household belongings and all that? What kind of preparations?

TT: Well, slowly when we found out we had to go, then we had to try to get things... but see, we didn't own our house, we were just renting a one-(bedroom) house, so we didn't have anything. So we're not like these people that had bigger homes, and some people were moving to Eastern Washington, so if we knew that they were going, and if it was something that the parents wanted, they would ask them to take it and keep it for them during the rest of the year.

TI: So did your parents do that, were they able to sort of have other families hold their stuff during the war?

TT: Yah. What my mother did was she very active in the Buddhist church. And so at the Buddhist church, they kind of sectioned areas and gave people a place to put things, and they were safe there. But we had, also had a neighbor that owned their own house, so everybody was putting stuff in their house and in the attic.

TI: This was a Japanese family?

TT: It was a Japanese family that had owned their house. But you know, everybody was so gullible, they thought, oh, it'll be safe because it belongs to them. But everything there was stolen.

TI: Oh, so during the war, so was it vacant and they just stored it, or was someone else living there?

TT: I think somebody else was living there.

TI: But it sounds like, so that maybe your family lost some stuff...

TT: Just material things, yah.

TI: But not too much.

TT: No, 'cause they didn't have much. It's the ones that had property or had anything, I mean, they were the ones that really suffered. So like when we went to camp, we just took what we had.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2015 Densho. All Rights Reserved.