<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.