<Begin Segment 14>

DH: Then you said that being the eldest of the six, you had to really help the Issei understand what was going on because they had to be registered and then their guns were seized and short wave radios and dynamite and all that kind of stuff. There must have been a lot of confusion. Did you get a growing sense of fear that there was going to be more animosity toward the Japanese community on the island?

IN: Well, particularly when the notice came that Bainbridge Islanders would have to leave within almost a week's time, I felt that being a citizen that we would probably not be asked to leave. But when the order came that we all had to go -- and some of the elder, the men had been taken by the FBI, and taken to Missoula, Montana, where they had the place for them -- and so a lot of the families had the male of the family was gone. And the confusion was really, really bad because just the mother and the siblings were there, but the, and some of them had -- there was one particular family that I remember. They had no mother to begin with. She had passed on and the oldest daughter was about fourteen, and they had about four or five, five or six kids. And they had taken the father away and so she was the one that had to take care of the family and that was a very difficult time.

DH: Well, let's talk about that week. When the evacuation order came for the Island, Islanders had, Japanese Islanders had eight days to prepare to leave, and you had talked before about how the crops were in.

[Interruption]

DH: Let's go back to talking about the evacuation order.

KN: Okay. That's on?

DH: Yeah. We're back. Okay. Bainbridge Islanders, the Japanese on Bainbridge Island were the first to be evacuated, and when the order came you were given eight days. So describe what those eight days were like. What did you do during those eight days?

KN: I think he was the busy one.

IN: Well, yeah, because I'm being one of the older Nisei and we sort of played interpreters role possibly and so a lot of the families, the older Japanese, couldn't understand the directives and so forth and so they would call. And it was a hectic time because nobody, and even the people that had administered the whole proceedings, they were not very well informed either. So we had to do what we could do and settle our business within the eight days. We had farms and some people had other businesses and so forth, and to find a manager, our crops were just about ready to be picked within a month's time, had arrange for pickers and so forth and so on, and so it was a hectic time. And the specified that we could only carry, I mean, take whatever we could carry so we had to get, either dispose of our things or make other arrangements for storage or whatever. In fact, we had a couple of guys come to our place that wanted to buy our washing machine and refrigerator that we had just acquired, and so he offered me a pittance, and I said to him, "Hey, I'm not selling to you." So I didn't.

DH: People thought they could snap up bargains since you had to be out of here so quickly.

IN: Pardon?

DH: People thought they could snap up a bargain.

IN: Oh, yeah. But the Bainbridge Island was pretty good. They didn't come in hoards and try to take whatever they could at whatever price, but when he offered me the sum that very, you know, I decided I told him not. I wasn't selling.

DH: Did you go buy suitcases to pack up your things?

IN: Yeah. See, we were not travelers. We were just on Bainbridge most of the time, and in those days you didn't go. A trip to Seattle was a big deal, but seeing that we had to have suitcases and so forth, well, we bought the cheapest luggage we could find and make do.

DH: And the crops were coming along, you said? I think I had read that it was a really warm spring.

IN: Yeah. It was an early spring and the strawberries were all in bloom and within the month's time they were ready, the plants were ready for harvest.

DH: Well, as rumors were building that the Japanese might be evacuated, why did you go on farming then? You had to just keep getting your crops ready?

IN: That's right. One of the things they told us was that you would be compensated for your crops so just maintain them just like you would normally and that's what we did, but it turned out that we were never compensated as such. Fortunately for myself, we contracted with a berry packing company, and we did receive checks directly from the company.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.