<Begin Segment 6>

AI: Well, let's see. I think you were saying that in 1941 you would have been about fourteen years old...

RS: Yeah.

AI: In about the eighth grade. Do you recall anything around what happened when Pearl Harbor was bombed? That would have been in December of that year.

RS: Yeah, well in '41 after Pearl Harbor, yeah, I've heard a lot of things about "Japs get out of town," and all that kind of stuff. I saw quite a bit of that. And even my neighbors kind of got a little funny too, because, you know, Pearl Harbor. And otherwise I never got hassled or anything like that, as long as I remember. Although, I heard that sometimes going to town, you know they're talking, "Remember Pearl Harbor" and things like that.

AI: So after the Pearl Harbor bombing, you did get some of that in your classroom, from some of the neighbors...

RS: Yeah, there was a few people that was -- well I guess they were really prejudiced because they started talking that way. But most of them didn't talk that way.

AI: And what about, do you remember in your family talking with your parents or with your older brothers and sisters about what that was going to mean for your family? Or was anybody worried in your family about what might happen?

RS: Well, I'm sure that they were concerned, because they didn't know what 's gonna happen. You might of got ganged or whatever. Yeah, we were concerned about that. So I think at that time, we kind of laid back and not went to town and a lot of those places, that you might get into a fight or something like that. So we kind of held back.

AI: Held back a little bit...

RS: Um, right.

AI: Sort of stayed out of sight.

RS: Yeah, we didn't just stay at home all of the time, but we kind of laid back.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.