<Begin Segment 16>

AI: So there were many positive things about having such a close-knit and very rich Japanese American community.

CN: I think so. Everyone knew everyone else. We knew when, when anyone had a new baby or someone was getting married. It was as if the family, as if it was happening in the family, kind of thing, and that's nice. And I look back now and think, well, that's part of our identity. I identify myself as having grown up on the eastside in Bellevue and Kirkland and Redmond, and so I don't regret any of that.

AI: And then, and then all of that came to a very abrupt halt when you found that you were going to be, so-called, "evacuated," forced to leave everything. And it sounds like your parents' business was really thriving at that time. Do you recall much of what they had do or what you all had to do in preparation for leaving?

CN: It just seemed like we were carting things to this hakujin family and that hakujin family and then just leaving. To me, in looking back, it was just all very precipitous. I know that my, my mother was so proud, so happy with -- well, proud, too, with her new washing machine, and then having to sell it, and her new stove or cooking range, and then changing her mind, and, of course, it was too late. And then I remember very distinctly spending, throwing things into the fire that we burned to heat the furo water, the bath water, throwing Japanese records as well as photographs of people and relatives in Japan, especially those, we had several uncles who were by this time in the Japanese army or wherever.

AI: And did you have much discussion with your parents as you were doing this?

CN: Yeah, it was that we're being watched, and that's what the scuttlebutt was and the rumor was, and so... and we were being watched. So anything that had anything to do with Japan were destroyed. Which is really too bad, isn't it? It's so sad, but I do remember and it wasn't just, not my family, others did the same.

AI: And do you know whether your parents were able to sell any portion of their business or were they able to keep part of it? How was it --

CN: No, it was... my sister and I were too young to help with that, meaning we were not of legal age. And some families -- a family in Seattle said that they would help us. This is a Caucasian family, but, of course, that went by the wayside. No. So everything was left and when we came back, we had so start from scratch.

AI: So your family lost everything that they had worked for?

CN: Uh-huh. So that's how it was. We left a lot of -- all the Japanese in Bellevue left a lot of things in the Japanese community hall that we called kokaido, and I don't know what happened to those things. And some of our things were, eventually ended up in the, in a storage place. I think it was called Hunt. No, Beacons. And all I remember is that the rose-colored rug that was in my room upstairs was the only thing that was left. If there were other things, I don't remember.

AI: So basically you left everything.

CN: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.