Densho Digital Archive - Jimmie Omura Interview (denshovh-ojimmie-01-0017)

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CO: Can we get up to when the war started? Let's start there then, to move us into the camps.

JO: Where do you want to start? There's all sorts of starting points.

CO: Okay, all right. Well, where were you when the war started? Where were you located and what were you doing?

JO: I was in San Francisco, I was publishing the magazine, Current Life. I was also working at the flower market; I was a buyer and head shipping clerk for [inaudible] company. That's about all.

CO: Describe your magazine to us.

JO: The magazine, I had this idea that the Nisei could best obtain upward mobility if they worked from the top down rather than from the bottom up because working from the bottom up as we had been, we were in competition with so many laboring people. And it was the laboring people who were holding us down. So I thought that by educating the literatis and the people in the, officials at the universities and the institutions, organization, that they, we would have this trickle-down theory that could educate their people and eventually their people would be the ordinary people. So on that basis, we started this monthly magazine because no one was doing anything for the Japanese Americans, we were all stuck in the mud. And we began and we had phenomenal success for a new publication. Mostly you would say a new publication is going to have a tough time. Not us. We were accepted almost immediately by many educational systems in the United States, by the public libraries, by the Library of Congress, and we were already going into Canada, Hawaii, Japan. So we were becoming an international magazine. In the magazine were articles by, literary works by Nisei. We also spotlighted Nisei endeavors and there were articles by people like Terry McWilliams who wrote for it. And we had William Saroyan look it over, who praised us for it. We had Common Grounds editor also praise us for it. The newspapers of the time, not only the Japanese vernacular newspaper, but the metropolitan papers were awfully kind to us. The Chronicle ran pictures of us. Mayor Rossi cut a birthday cake, which his picture was taken. The Herald in Los Angeles wrote about us. And we were on our way, I thought, when the war struck.

CO: Where were you December 7th -- he's getting there -- okay, tell us about when the war started for you.

JO: Well, I was out in Daly City picking up orders because I placed orders with the growers, then go out and pick it up and bring it back and then I'd do the packing on Sundays. On Sundays, I'm the only person on duty. And we have about seven to nine boxes to ship by southern railway to Texas and Louisiana and places like that.

CO: You're talking about flowers?

JO: Yeah. And coming back, I noticed that Bayshore Drive was awfully deserted. And I wondered why, and while I was wondering I came down Market Street, and Market Street was deserted. And by the time I got to the warehouse, I was pretty well puzzled but I heard news hawks, two news hawks shouting, "Extras," but I couldn't make out what they were saying. And I was standing outside the alley listening but I couldn't catch, he was coming closer to the shop, but then he veered off on Mission Street and we lost him. About three o'clock, a railway express man comes to pick up boxes, came around, but this was a person I didn't know. And I asked him about the extra. And he says he'll go see. He never came back. Then about close to six o'clock, I was pretty near finished when the regular express crew came about five or six, and I knew these people and I asked them what it was all about and they says, "We are at war, Jimmie," he says. That's the first time I knew about Pearl Harbor.