<Begin Segment 14>

CN: I remember the day of December 7, 1941. We had a flower shop on Twelfth Avenue and Spring Street, just a few blocks from Seattle U. And my sister at that time was running the shop. My father would bring the flowers and would spend time, and on the weekends I would go in and help. My mother would tend the things at home, and my father and my sister and I would be working at the flower shop. And got this call from, from home saying, telling us what had happened, that father would be in to pick us up, and we would be spending time at home. And so I remember that and what did this mean and, and why? And it seemed like immediately people in Seattle, around there, behaved differently. I can't tell you. I think it was just our feeling that we were different; and, therefore, we were, we looked just like the Japanese. And part of us, whether we liked it or not, we were Japanese. And so why did they do this horrible thing? And it was hard for me to separate myself saying, "Well, I'm an American Japanese and, therefore, I didn't do any of that so I'm okay." I didn't, I didn't feel that way. I, there was a lot of, I should say some of the guilt associated with what the Japanese in Japan had done, and so I should say what the military had done, the Japanese military. And so it was very difficult. And then the very next day, having to go to school. And I remember very distinctly, I sat, my seat was toward the back of the room, and our, we all had to listen to President Roosevelt giving his famous speech and how very uncomfortable I felt and feeling that I was, I was different. And there was another Japanese girl in my class; and her family, just within a month or so, maybe two months, moved to the east of the mountains to Quincy, Washington, where they joined some friends of theirs. And I, then, became the only one.

AI: What kind of, what kind of reactions did you have from your peers or the adults, the teachers? Did you have any negative kinds of things directed towards you?

CN: Not, not from my, my peers and my teachers. They were, at least on the surface, and I think they were sincere. They felt a lot of sympathy and saying, "We know it isn't you or your family." And that helped, but not all that much because you still felt different. And not only different, but you felt like you really stood out. And, which is funny to say because we stood out anyway, way back. But the feeling within us, within me, was obviously -- within us, I guess I should say, because we all felt different, and we all felt terrible. And I remember my hakujin friends and I watching the notice to evacuate from that area going up... you know, they would tack these up on the utility poles. And that was very hard. What did this mean? I don't know what it means. I guess we had to leave before -- I don't know where we'll go. And my family talked about going somewhere, but where can you go unless you really knew someone extremely well who would ask you to join them in Spokane or wherever. But anyway, we had to stick around. A family in -- just days before we were evacuated, we had to clear out where we were living, and I remember how hard it was to say goodbye to our pets. And, but this family in Bellevue offered us to stay with them for a day or two so that we could all go together. And I don't even know where we, where we were taken, where we met to get on the train to go to -- well, as it turned out, we were on our way, we went to Pinedale. But how, how wonderful it was for, to see most of all my classmates who had come to say goodbye.

AI: So it was, sounds like a really wrenching experience.

CN: Yeah, I'm getting all choked up right now, but it was very nice...

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