<Begin Segment 14>

DG: So, other people were being taken in and your father wasn't, right away?

SS: No. Right away I think, mostly were the Isseis like, Japanese schoolteachers, the Buddhist priests and all that... the people who were really involved with Japan.

DG: Were you worried at all?

SS: Not really and then all of a sudden, he's gone. And... you begin to wonder, because he wasn't taken in as soon as the war started.

DG: Right, right.

SS: And to be taken in almost ten months after. And here, all the time he's working and if you were a citizen, you were able to -- even if it's blacked out -- you were able to stay out, whereas the aliens had to be in the house.

DG: Oh, is that right?

SS: That's right.

DG: So how did they determine who was alien and who...?

SS: We all had I.D.

DG: Oh, okay.

SS: We had to carry.

DG: What about the other minority groups, how did they feel about you?

SS: We really didn't associate with any other minority per se, because all the... our friends were Japanese, we lived right next door to each other, the whole area.

DG: So there must have been a grapevine about different events. What did they say was happening in the war?

SS: Whatever was in the Star Bulletin.

DG: Was Japan winning?

SS: Well, if the Star Bulletin said that Japan was bombing here and there and...

DG: So, you were always worried that they might come back... to bomb.

SS: We were all worried.

DG: Right. So, what did you do to your house, to get prepared?

SS: Not much, just everyone had to have a bomb shelter.

DG: Now, what was that, how did you...?

SS: They dug a portion and then...

DG: The side of your house?

SS: Close by.

DG: Close by?

SS: Yeah.

DG: Just for your own family or bigger one?

SS: Uh-huh. And because we lived in what they called a camp, several families in a row house, they built one that would accommodate about ten to fifteen people. So everyone had one.

DG: And what was in the bomb shelter?

SS: Not much... flashlight maybe, that's about it because... we had some food but we never thought about putting them in the bomb shelter. I think because of all the rats and all; right...? In Hawaii. When you think about it now sounds kind of stupid doesn't it?

DG: Did your father help dig it or anything like that?

SS: They all did, all the men folks. And even the schools, we had to have bomb shelters before we can go back to school.

DG: Oh... so part of the school, what, did they have to dig it there, too?

SS: Uh-huh, all the schools had to have bomb shelters.

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