<Begin Segment 9>

TI: So you guys are... my picture right now is of a fairly prosperous, almost like farming clan in the Watsonville area.

HY: Yeah.

TI: The Shikumas, the Yoshidas, and things seem like they're going pretty well before the war.

HY: Yeah, and they had a lot of Japanese because my grandfather helped us sponsor a lot of farmers that came in, immigrants who came in. You know, he was very well-known in the community at that time and had many friends. So I think it was, when he left for camp, he had bought property in Watsonville and I think it was close to (one) hundred acres in that home farm that he had. Fortunately, when he had to leave, his friend Tony Tomasello came and lived on that farm and took care of it while he was gone.

TI: Yeah, so that's kind of leading to my next question. So on December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor, how did that change things for your family? I guess maybe the question is -- and you mentioned Tony Tomasello who helped them -- but were there cases where other people would start treating them differently because of the war? It's a pretty close-knit community, I'm just wondering how the war, the outbreak of the war affected them.

HY: I wasn't old enough there to really know or understand that. But I think in the farming communities that they were, I don't think there was any real ill feelings or anything, because they were friends in that community. I don't think they experienced anything except my father being in Salinas at that time, it was different for him, I guess, in that he had to sell everything, and I'm sure he lost quite a bit during that time.

TI: Yeah, so that's, I guess, a nice contrast. That Watsonville, especially when you have people like Tony there, so he helped save the Shikuma farm, but in Salinas, your father wasn't as fortunate.

HY: Yeah. From what I understand, I know when I came back, there was a lot of discrimination from people in town. And I think in Salinas there was a National Guard unit that was in the Philippines, maybe even in Bataan. And so there was a very strong feeling in, more in Salinas than in Watsonville, I think.

TI: I think I've heard that. So any other stories about the preparation of the properties or selling of the properties before people had to leave?

HY: No. During my aunt's funeral, my uncle Mac's wife, Aunt Hiroko, we had the funeral in Watsonville -- and this is maybe about ten years ago. So many older hakujin people from Watsonville came up to me and told me how they were sorry that the evacuation happened. My aunt Hiroko was pregnant at that time with my cousin Larry, and so many of them had come to see them off. The evacuation point was the Westview church in Watsonville, where all the, I don't know if it was, Buddhists came there, too, but most of the Christian families came there. And so many of them mentioned they had visited them during that time to say goodbye to them. So I think there was, you know, among the farming communities, there were many, and business communities there were many friends. However, I know when I came back, there was quite a, when we initially came back, there was quite a resentment about us, mostly from the townspeople, not from the people in the farming communities, the people who knew us.

TI: Yeah, we'll go more into that.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.