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BN: Then where did you live?

CT: In Alameda.

BN: I mean, was it a house?

CT: Yes.

BN: And did your family own the house?

CT: No. You see, Japanese Isseis were not allowed to buy homes. And so I remember this Portuguese man would come with a bottle of wine every month, and my father would pay him cash. And he said, "Mr. Takano," and he had an accent, they both, broken English, "You give money, I give house." I still remember that conversation. And my father said, "No, go to jail." "You no go jail. Give me money, I give house." But my father tried to tell him it was illegal, he could not buy a house, he was Issei. And a lot of Isseis did put it in their children's name, and during the war, that was confiscated, because they bought, it was illegal, they put it in their children's names. So I still remember when this man would come and say...

BN: To be clear, was he, essentially, offering to buy the house for your father?

CT: No, no, he owned the house, this Portuguese man.

BN: Oh, I see. So he was trying to sell him the house.

CT: Yes. And he would come and my father would give him the rent.

BN: So he was renting from him, and the guy wanted him to buy it, but he couldn't.

CT: And the man didn't understand that the law was my father could not. Now, a lot of Japanese did buy the house if they had someone turn twenty-one. Then they would buy the house.

BN: So your father refused to kind of skirt the law by buying --

CT: That's right, he was afraid that something might happen. And the families that had many children, but if the eldest turned twenty-one, the just got their money together and bought a house.

BN: And then did you stay in that house throughout, all the way up to the war?

CT: Until the war, exactly. Because when the war started, I was twelve years old, and my sister turned sixteen.

BN: Do you remember the address or what street it was?

CT: Oh, yes, 2316 Eagle Avenue. And on that street, we had about four Japanese families, and all the others were Germans, Italians. And they all spoke in broken English, and when they found out that we had to be removed in February, we had to leave Alameda in February. Terminal Island in Los Angeles County and Alameda were the two towns that we were surrounded by water, and we had to leave, we had to move out. There were no camps, we had to move out. And so we left everything in the house, we just thought it was going to be temporary. And somebody came with a huge truck and put our necessary things in, thinking we'd come back again, but we never did. Once we moved to the country, to a place called Cortez, which was Japanese farmers, and one of the families said, "Why don't you just come stay with us?" And we said, "Oh, the war will be over in no time, and we could go back." And so my father just packed the things he could, but from there we went into the camps.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.