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PW: So when you had your, by the time you had your business, you said this was 1940, were you still single, or had you...

YW: No. I was married when I had my shop.

PW: How did you meet your husband?

YW: (...) I went to beauty school with his sister. He had a sister that went to beauty school, but that's how we met.

PW: What was the school name? I don't know its name. (East Bay School of Beauty Culture.)

YW: I married Tak, Takeshi Katayanagi. So I was married before the war started. And at the time, I was working at the beauty shop, two policemen came and said, "You're not supposed to be open, you should be going home and get ready to pack your baggage to get ready to leave." And I said, "Where? Why?" And he said, "Didn't you read all the posts that was posted on the telephone poles out there?" And I said, "No." And he said, "Well, there's a notice on all the telephone poles that says anybody of Japanese ancestry," they were rounding them up to be taken. Because of national security, because the war was starting. And that's how I was notified, when these policemen came to my beauty shop and told me that I had to go home, and I should be starting to pack. And I did get upset, and I told them, my beauty shop was full of people, customers, I handed him my comb and brush and told him, "Okay, you finish them and I'll go home." And so then they decided, okay, well, you can finish up the day, but you had to go home, close the shop. So I did, but when I got home, my dad told me to hurry up and start packing. And I said, "No, that doesn't pertain to me, I'm an American citizen." I was worried for him because Isseis at that time were not allowed to become citizens. So I was worried for him but I said, "Don't worry about us, we're American citizens," and things like that. "It's not going to happen, we're not going to be sent anyplace." So although they told us to pack our things, I was one of those holdouts that wouldn't pack until the very last minute.

And when I realized that this actually was happening, I did start to pack. And I finally looked at the list, and they said, in this package, you could take with you everything you could carry, but in this bundle, there are certain item that are required. And the requirements were things like bedding for each person, dishes, cups, knives and forks and spoons for each person. Yes, and they definitely said knives and forks, but at the same time, they're saying, "but nothing that cuts." However, I did manage to pack, but I packed like I was going to go on a vacation, because the rumors were they're going to send us someplace to the middle of a desert, and they're going to leave us there. This was the rumor. So I said, "Well, if they send us there, I won't stay there. I'm not going to stay there because when they clear me, I'll be coming home." And at the same time, the notices were saying that we should get rid of everything that's in our house, your furniture, everything. The house had to be cleaned, cleared. And I said, "Well, I can't carry my bedroom set, can't carry my refrigerator," but all I thought was that I had to carry my clothes, and then, well, I'm going to the desert, so we had to leave all our nice Sunday dresses hanging on the closet, all our nice shoes and nice dresses. So all I took with us were clothes that I thought I would need for the desert. And when I thought about the desert, they said, "We're going to go to a camp." At that time, all I knew about camps were Girl Scout camps and Boy Scout camps, I didn't know about concentration camps.

So, of course, the big shock was... oh, and they did tell us that, at that time, there were so many of us that the camp wasn't ready, but in the meantime, that they were sending us someplace else. And I thought I was going to go to a hotel or someplace like that. Instead, it was shock when I found out that they dropped us off at Tanforan, which was a horse racing place. And I knew that it was such a place because I had gone there with my husband a couple of times when we went to go see the horses race. I recognized that place. And when we got there, we saw some barracks, the kind the servicemen live in, and we thought, well, we'll stay here for a couple of weeks, and when I got cleared, I'll go home. I had my birth certificate, I had my driver's license. What else do I need? And they said, well, they need proof of our loyalty. How do you prove loyalty? I said, "What do I need to show you? What do I have to have?" And they said, well, the way you prove loyalty, just do as we ask you to do. Do it now, and do it peacefully, and we did. We did everything I was told to do. Gave up where we lived, I gave up my shop with all of my equipment and everything. I was not going to sell anything, because I thought that I would be cleared shortly, and when I come back, I would need everything, so I didn't want to sell anything. And also I thought, well, if I'm going to go to camp, I'm going to need a little money, because at that time, all I had was car fare and lunch money for the day. And I went to the bank, and they had already closed all our accounts. They said, "Your account's been confiscated." So we weren't allowed to get into our own bank account.

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