<Begin Segment 6>

FK: Can you tell me about when the FBI came to Bainbridge Island, what happened then?

TM: Yeah, well, I was working in the greenhouse. I wasn't home but the other guys were home. They said they looked through everything. I was working in the greenhouse and the guy comes in there and sits down there, just watching me and he wouldn't say nothing. So I said, "Well, what's going on here?" and he wouldn't tell me. Then they grabbed Shig and his father and mother, and started interrogating them, I guess. I didn't see them the whole time that the FBI was down at the Furuta's place there, then it wasn't 'til after I got home that I found out that the FBI was around.

FK: So how did that affect your family?

TM: Well, it didn't affect anybody. Oh, they, first, they grabbed my mother and took her to the immigration station in Seattle, I guess, and interrogated her some more. Then she came back, because they didn't have anything on her, I guess, except when she got married and all that red tape there, that she came as a certain person and then the name changed and this and that.

FK: Were you home when they actually took your mother away?

TM: No.

FK: Do you remember what feelings you had when that happened?

TM: Yeah. Yeah, they grabbed a few more other people, like Mr. Otaki and Mr. Suyematsu and them, but they came back. They couldn't have, they couldn't... didn't have anything on 'em, I guess. And some of 'em they held on to, like your father and Mr. Nishimori, and Terashita, Nishi and Hayashida, they practically, they didn't come back to join the family until after about a year in camp, when they came back.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.