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BN: So you said you were in Cortez for a couple months before going to, what was it, Turlock or Merced?

CT: Merced assembly.

BN: So did you go to school and stuff in Cortez for that timeframe?

CT: Yes, and it was only about two months. And so I was in Alameda, low eighth, and then I would have been high eighth. But they only had eighth, they didn't have low eighth, high eighth, and so they gave me a test because they didn't want to put me back to seventh grade because I was in low eighth in Alameda, and I took the test, very simple, and they said, "Well, you belong to the eighth grade." And so that way I moved up a half a year, so to tell you the truth, in camp, I also, somehow or other, skipped or whatever, I graduated. I turned sixteen in April and I graduated two months later, I was sixteen in two months, and I graduated. Oh, my. So not good to graduate too young.

BN: Too young, huh?

CT: Nobody wants you.

BN: So with Alameda, all the families had to go. So what happened to, like your friends families and others? Did you keep in touch with people?

CT: Do you know what happened? We had to get out because everybody was trying to find places to go. A lot of Japanese people, we didn't have cousins and all that. And if they had brother, if they found a friend there, they said, "Well, if you could come to Sacramento," or some of them did have relatives, the FBI came every day, it was scary. And then one lady called, and my father said, "All right, all right, I'll be there." And my mother said, "Who was that?" and he said, "That was Mrs. Maruyama." He said, "The FBI just came and took her husband," and she had three little, the oldest one was my brother's age, about nine years old, and she's crying. They broke the door down, and she doesn't know what to do. It was about eight-thirty at night, and my mother said, "It's a trap, please don't go, please don't go. They're making her do that." He said, "She's by herself, I could hear the children crying." And they lived about two and a half blocks away from us on another street, and my mother said, "It's after eight, you'll be arrested," and she was just panicked, but my father said, "I have to go." And he went over there and he saw the kids crying, the door broken down, and she was a much younger lady, her husband was the younger brother of another family that we were very good friends with, but they had already moved to San Jose. So my father said, "She said, 'We were going to move next week to so and so,' but she said, 'but they took my husband, so we can't go now.'" So my father said, "What is the phone number of your brother-in-law that moved last week to San Jose?" So he got the number and he came home, and he said he came home, maybe he was within an hour and a half or two, and he tried to close the door. He said, "Do you want to come and live with us?" She said no. The children were crying, and so then he, oh, there, he got on the phone and he called San Jose. And we were told they were tapping the phones. It was a very fearful time for us. But he said, "The FBI came and took your brother, your younger brother, and your sister-in-law has three children here alone, and I'm not supposed to be out of the house after eight o'clock. But I'm here, and you've got to either get someone to come to Alameda and help take her to your place, or you can call me, but she's in big trouble." And so he thanked my father profusely and he said, "Let me talk to her," and then my father waited, and then after he hung up, he said maybe he'll get some people from San Jose, some people who are Niseis, and they'll come to Alameda and pick her up. And so she said, "He told me to just pick up the essentials, that's all." And so then my father, in the dark, he walked over, because we were not supposed to be out of the house after eight o'clock, and we all had to pull down our shades. It was a scary time for us.

BN: It seems like the community was really on their own to try to figure out what to do with families like you describe.

CT: And when the head of the family was taken by the FBI, she called my father, and he's not supposed to be out of the house. But it was nighttime, and all our shades were down, we had to pull down the... and my mother was so worried when he didn't come back for a long time, she thought, "Oh, it was a trap, he was picked up by the FBI." It was just the active people in the group that were being taken by the FBI, and several already had been taking people from Alameda, the FBI.

BN: But fortunately your father was not.

CT: He was not. And so he said, "I'm going to be here to the last day, to make sure everybody's out, the church is taken care of." And my mother says, "Why would you worry about that? We have to get out, they'll come after you because they'll come after you, because you're active in this community." And he said no. And so the very last day, the 22nd of February, and we left the 22nd of February. But it was a horrendous time because on that very last day, the 22nd of February, my mother sent us out to buy last minute things, and we were walking down to the main shopping area, and we looked down the street where our church was. And right next door to our church was the Nakata family, he was very active in the Japanese community, he belonged to the Methodist church, but he and my father would give the Japanese community the help they did. We looked down that street, right next to the Buddhist church, there's a huge house. We saw Mr. Nakata coming out with handcuffs and the FBI. My sister -- and the children would come out and they were crying -- we didn't even get to Long's, we ran all the way back, and we told my mother, "Mr. Nakata was just taken by the FBI. They just had him, and they took him." And right next door was the Buddhist church where my father was cleaning up the place having people put things away, all the Isseis were gone. But the older Niseis, a few families stayed behind to help close up the church. But my mother tried to call the Buddhist church, and we didn't get through. Well, they had stopped the phones already. And so I said, "Never mind, I could run fast." I said, "I'll run to church and tell him hurry up and come home because the FBI took, next door, right here, Mr. Nakata." And he was with the Methodist church, but he was active in the Japanese Association and all. And so we told my mother and that panicked her, so I said, "I'll run to the church." My mother said, "No, everybody stay home, stay home." Do you know, he didn't get home 'til six-thirty, dark. And he did not know that next door, the FBI had taken him that day around noontime. My sister and I saw that, we ran home, we didn't even go to buy the last minute things. And my father came home and it was dark, and we said, "Did you know Mr. Nakata next door was taken?" He said, "When?" We said, "While you were at the church right next door." And my mother couldn't get through to him, the phones were disconnected already.

And so he got on the phone and he called someone, it's called Fremont now, it was called Centerville, and little towns, but now it's called Freemont, all these five towns. And my father said, "Can you come early tomorrow?" We were going meet her and we were the last Issei family to leave. And he said, "Can you come early?" and half Japanese, half English, and he said, "I'll be there five o'clock in the morning." And so this fellow came with this big truck, and he was a farmer so he had a big truck. And my sister was the eldest, she was fifteen then, I guess I was barely twelve, and my brother, and so he, that's how he came, helped load his truck. And five o'clock in the morning, and by six o'clock, we just took off, and it was Sunday, the 22nd of February, and so it was still dark. And we didn't have daylight savings time or anything like that, it was still dark. And you know, we left five-thirty in the morning? Now we could get to Cortez, that town, hour and a half. We left five-thirty in the morning, we got there five-thirty in the evening. Of course, he had the truck. When we got there, they were standing outside, it was dark, they said, "We thought the FBI picked you up today because they were all over the place here and they just left a half hour ago, and they took several families' fathers, the FBI. We thought, wow, we were lucky. We just got there and the FBI just left. But you know, people lived in fear, that's what's so different right now, it was so fearful. And a lot of them, when we got to camp, we had families where there were little children, their fathers were taken by the FBI, and they didn't know where they were. Some of them went to Crystal City, Texas, some were somewhere else, and then not only that, every one of the Buddhist ministers, I think, every one was taken. And after the war, we had something at the Methodist church, and they talked about it, they said there was not one Protestant or Catholic Japanese. There were not very many Catholic Japanese, but there were many, many of the Christian faith. But they said none of the Protestant churches were taken, so that was gratifying, but horrible. And so when we went to camp, most of the camps did not have the ministers, but eventually some were let out maybe within a year or so, but ours didn't come home 'til three years.

BN: Yeah, because a lot of... not a lot, but some were let out of the Justice Department camps and were able to rejoin families in camp.

CT: Exactly.

BN: But not everybody.

CT: Not everybody, yes, some came 'til the very end. So it was frightening times.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.