<Begin Segment 4>

NW: I want to go back for a minute to that day, Pearl Harbor day. When you heard that news, what did you feel?

MW: I was just in shock; I couldn't believe it. Like everybody else, I think... I didn't know what to believe.

NW: Did people treat you differently after that day?

MW: I don't remember that. I don't remember that they were... I think maybe they were just not expressing anything. I don't remember that there was hostility. I think there are a lot of things I don't want to remember, maybe, throughout my life. But no specific incident. Mostly I think they were pretty kind. And so the kind thing was that when it came time for me to... when the evacuation orders came out, I realized I don't want to be in a different area as my parents because they would be going somewhere else, and that's when they were good enough to let me take my exams in Chico, that was given by the Dean of Women. So I got all my credits, including piano, classes that I took for piano. And so I was very fortunate. I didn't lose my two years of college.

NW: So you were able to... or I guess you sort of had to move home then?

MW: I went home so that I could be with the family, and Mom was packing things, getting rid of things. And I think I kind of was numb and not remembering a lot of things about many things in my life, but the FBI did come.

NW: This was after Pearl Harbor?

MW: Yeah. And my father was taken to the police station. He knew that they knew him as a friend, the police chief. I think it was not easy for them to do this, but he was released. And so our attention was to packing, and like everybody else throughout California or everywhere, when they thought the police where coming they burned things, but we didn't have that much. Mother did have a little Buddhist thing, the temple. I remember when it was the day of her father's death, she put fresh rice and that kind of thing. But on the same time, she would go to the church with the church ladies and have social time with them. I remember going to the train station. Fifty years... has it been fifty-three? I went back to high school, a reunion, and one of the people there said, "I was at that train station as a soldier when you were leaving." I never thought about asking, "How did you feel?" "What were you thinking?" I think, now, why didn't I ask him? How many years? When I went back to the reunion they were very warm and welcoming. Stayed with one of the Caucasian friends. Anyway, old memories.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.