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VY: And then, in 1941, on December 7th, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. How old were you at that time, and what happened to your family after that?

FN: I was six and a half years old when that happened, so I really, it didn't make an impact on me, and I didn't really understand. I know my grandfather was very, very agitated, because he thought that this was just a very, very stupid thing for Japan to do. Said, "Don't the Japanese realize what a big country this is?" The United States is nothing like Japan, a small island country with many, many people. The United States is so big and so vast and has such a huge population compared to Japan," he thought it was just absolutely stupid, I know that. My parents didn't say too much, they didn't say too much.

VY: What kinds of things did they have to do to prepare to leave? How did they deal with their nursery?

FN: Well, Richmond, at the time, was already constructing the Liberty ships in Richmond, so Richmond was considered a war zone in that it was, it could have been targeted to be bombed. It was not a safe place, the United States government thought. And so in order to protect the shipbuilding industry, the United States government said to the Isseis living in Richmond, they would have to leave the area. So in early February of 1942, the Isseis already had to prepare to leave their nurseries to their children to have them operated. Well, my parents didn't have children that were old enough to do this. But anyway, they did prepare, and my mother's family was living in Livingston, so we were going to move to Livingston in early February. And the day that we were leaving for Livingston, my father was arrested by the FBI. He was not an American citizen, and he was arrested by the FBI. So we children had been sent to Livingston early that day, and when my mother came with my younger sister, she was a wreck because she didn't know what was happening to my father, and we had all this turmoil of having to move to Livingston. But anyway, we did move to Livingston, and she had no idea where he was taken, but we're following the government order to leave Richmond for Isseis. So we move, and we started school in Livingston, but it was already February, we were living in the country. I don't know what had happened to my father, communication was not very good. But anyway, we were in Livingston, but my mother did have her relatives to help her with her family. And then, finally, my mother heard that my father would be sent to a place called Bismarck, North Dakota, and so he went there, and we went into a temporary camp, and then we were sent to Colorado with the people from Livingston.

VY: What was the temporary camp that you were sent to?

FN: We went to the county fairgrounds in Merced, California.

VY: Do you remember what that was like?

FN: I just don't remember. I know it must have been very chaotic with all those people, and I didn't really know the people that we were with. Fortunately, I was young enough that I don't remember all that chaos. And then my two other younger siblings, they have no recall, because my younger sister, Ann, was only six months old, and my brother was like three. So they don't remember, they had no recall.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.