<Begin Segment 7>

DG: Can you, can you tell me more about... I want to still talk about farming, before and after the war. What... because specifically this is for the memorial and what relocation... having to be away from your land for so long, and...

AS: Before the war we had, you probably know how many was here, roughly, huh?

DG: I've read it.

AS: Every one of 'em was a farmer. It wasn't nothin' else. What, what was that? Two hundred and some people that, when we left here? Somethin' like that, wasn't it? Well, they were all farmers. Well, some of them weren't farmers, they were on welfare, you know, I mean, but not very many. Most of 'em were... they struggled, I'm telling you. Some of 'em really had tough times.

DG: At the time of the war, were the Japanese...

AS: What was that?

DG: At the time of the war, before the war started, were the Japanese farms fairly successful? Were they doing okay?

AS: Yeah, they were doing all right. They were, they were getting by. Every year they were doing a little better. You know what I mean? But when the war started and then they, we had to leave here... see, we only had sixty days and we would have been harvesting our berries. You know what it is? Sixty days and then we had to leave. That's... they should at least let us harvest our crop, then leave. You know, that's what they should have did. I, I'm not the President, so... I just said... my dad and we hired people to help us weed and everything, all summer long and then here comes the harvest in sixty days and we had to leave? That's a, that's a real hardship. We never got a penny, get it? I mean, I'm not trying to be a crybaby or anything, but... I don't think you want to hear all that stuff.

DG: No, we do. And, did someone on the behalf of the Japanese write to the government to try to allow you to stay to farm?

AS: Now what?

DG: Did somebody in the community try to write to the government to allow you to stay?

AS: No, nobody even... it was a waste of time then. No, they just... when the war started, I think it was the next day or two days, FBI... everybody was chosen in the FBI, got a police badge and, come into my house, don't even knock. See the radio there? Put it in the woodshed, took a big axe and... [makes chopping motion with hand] and you know what I mean? They weren't even policemen. They were just hired as a destruction bugger. Said, "Well, that radio could be sent to Japan." I said, "Yeah, it could be. You wanna fix it and send it to Japan?" You know what I mean? My dad was not a, you know, double-crosser. You know, I mean, he farmed all his life. And you think he's gonna be a spy or something? Then they took him away, too, for how many days. Because we had dynamite and we used to clear the land. We used to blast stumps. And they found one or two of them caps, you know, for dynamite and then they took him away, too. And that was a hardship because we were young yet, you know. You know, I'm, I'm the oldest, but we had 'em down to... my sister's the youngest. She's, how old is she now?

DG: She was thirteen.

AS: She was... probably five, six years younger. She was probably thirteen or fourteen, yeah. So that's it, huh?

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.