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DG: So, yeah, we'll go ahead and move forward to, to when the war began, and December 7th, Pearl Harbor. Can you remember -- you were a young girl -- but can you remember what you were doing when you heard the news and what your feelings were...

ES: It was on the radio. And I don't remember my family... it didn't really hit me right away. I just heard there was war and then I didn't realize what war was, really. I mean, you know. And it seemed so, so much, you know, the distance seemed so far away that it just didn't seem to hit me at first until I heard these stories about, about having to move, maybe move. Or people were having strong feelings against the Japanese, a lot of the Japanese families. And I think... I mean, it still didn't really, really get to me yet. I really didn't feel it. I grant you, I might have been a little bit scared, but we're so... thing in our own home, just, we didn't hear what's happening all around us. So I, that part I don't...

DG: Do you remember what it was like to go to school after Pearl Harbor? Had anything changed?

ES: No, not really. There was no, there was no name-calling or anything like that. We just... they were still friendly to us, and no, there was not that much of a change. I didn't feel that much of a change there. Because somehow the people that we went to school with are... I think it was such a small class, we were very close to each other, you know, we knew each one pretty well. I mean, we just... friends are friends, and we thought... we didn't think otherwise that they weren't our friends.

DG: And do you remember at that time, your older brothers and sisters, the conversations or discussions they might have been having about...

ES: No, they never, they never said they had any hard time at the high school level. Somehow it was just a close-knit community. That we didn't... I guess because everybody knew each other and what they were like. So they... I don't think they ever had that kind of feeling of doing harm to us or that, that we were the enemy, something like that. There might have been some that maybe didn't care for us, but they never said anything to us, they just kinda stayed clear of us, that's all. But there was just very few of those, it seemed like. So on the whole, I think, I don't know. I just felt we were very lucky we were in a community like that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.