<Begin Segment 7>

EO: So, when did you hear about evacuation and how did you hear about it?

HU: Well, I hear Santa Anita was open up, and I don't know, there's a lot of people from Terminal Island. Their husbands, most of them is fishermen or either work in the cannery, those islands there. The husband didn't take it in. They have to get out there, they got no place to go, so they come into the L.A. downtown, some place in a Buddhist church, and they're staying there. Or if they had a friend someplace in Fresno or someplace, some people went there. But many of them stayed around downtown, in church, or either in the Buddhist church place there. And everybody helped each other because the government don't do anything for them. So meantime, we hear so much about the head of the Japanese retired army, Dr. Honda was, died in jail, he was, I don't know, probably around late forty or fifty, around his age. He died. And another woman used to call...

EO: You mean he was in the Justice Department, alien --

HU: Yeah, he was custody in the area. I tell you, he had family in Gardena, I think, or Torrance, around there. I never met him, I don't know, but a friend of mine lived in back of my place there. Another Japanese there, he had some of Dr. Honda's close family, he knew him. And the FBI report to his wife that he passed away in jail, so come over to the morgue and verify this death. But wife and his family, they hate to see... you know, he was a very healthy man, and now he's gone. So instead of the close family go, one of his relatives went over and he went over and opened up the sheets and verified his death. He looked at his hands, he had a deep mark on both hands. In other words, he'd been tied with, not a rope but a wire or something. That's what he told to a friend of mine in the back, and now I could tell that, see. While I was working in the Jewish market, one lady said that, "Jap is so cruel," telling me, direct to me. And I just said, "Well, I don't know about that," but the United States, the FBI, it's the same thing, I think. Dr. Honda didn't kill.

Then an hour later, FBI -- two men -- came over and show me a big sign, FBI, "I want to talk to you." They took me to downtown. They had the Third and Spring Street, they got a FBI headquarters there, and he questioned me, "Who told you that?" I said, "Oh, I went to pool hall and I hear somebody was talking," and they keep on pressure me to reveal the name who spread such a thing. "I just hear with my ears but I didn't see the face," I tell them. And then he took me back to the place I worked. Then after that I quit, because I don't feel good. FBI -- I mean, Jewish people are talking like that, my responsibility or something, that whatever happened there, and that's it. "I don't like that. I think I'm going to quit now." So I quit after that. Then the FBI came over to my place and once more picked me up and same thing, they questioned, and, "Bring a name or else." They threatened me, but I keep on saying, "I don't know. If there's something I don't know, I couldn't tell you," I told them.

And just the night before we evacuate, you know, they give an order to go to Manzanar, that was night before. They called me over telephone. I didn't have a telephone in my home but my landlady, four-plex, and right next door, she called me, "You have a telephone call." So I went up and listened to telephone and they said, "Either you tell me the name of the person he told you that or else we're going to put you in the jail." And I told them, "Go ahead. Tomorrow my family going to the camp. So I don't have to worry their living, so go ahead, you want to put me in jail, go right ahead." And that was the last threat I had. But they didn't do anything. But when they come to, I went to Manzanar, they came over, FBI, two of them, they came over and the same thing over and over. But I'm never going to say the friend of mine in back, because he's a non-citizen, so if I tell the name -- he had three children. I don't like to see the father being detained to the enemy area in camp and the family going to have a miserable time. I know that so I never... you know, FBI, they had a bunch of money on the table and they tried to turn me in as a spy for them. No, I don't want that. Probably had about, oh, four or five times, the FBI take me in and question, question. Then they ask me, "Who's going to win the war?" How the hell do I know? I've never been an army man, I don't know. All I know is what you see in the paper, I see in the paper, that's all I know. [Laughs]

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.