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EO: Do you remember when the order came down?

AH: The order for us to be moved away from our home was signed by President Roosevelt and became effective on February 19, 1942. The order actually said, military commanders -- of which there were a number -- the Eastern Defense Command, Southern, Central, Western -- the commanders are authorized to designate certain areas as military zones, or prohibited zones, from which they may exclude whomever they feel should be prohibited from their areas. It was a very broad, direct authority. That authority was... President Roosevelt gave that authority to the Secretary of War, Henry Stimson, who then passed down this permission to prohibit, to set up military zone, and prohibit certain, any persons they thought should not be in those areas, transferred that authority to the individual command generals. And on the West Coast, it was a general whose name was John L. DeWitt, who took advantage of this authority and declared certain areas as prohibited and restricted areas. He was afraid, I believe, that he might get caught in the same kind of situation that General Short and Admiral Kimmel found themselves in after the attack on Pearl Harbor. As you know, they were court-martialed and General DeWitt wanted to make sure he was going to be ready for any invasion by the Japanese forces. And so he went overboard to try to cover his flank and never to be put in the same position as those, the general and the admiral in Pearl, at Pearl Harbor.

EO: But do you remember when those orders were tacked up, and you realized, or how did you hear that you had to move?

AH: Most of us belonged to community groups or churches, and the army took advantage of those organizations to pass the word around. I believe it was in March of 1942, that... mid-March, a little after mid-March, when the first exclusion order, which affected the Bainbridge Island people, right off Seattle, Washington, they were the first group who were ordered to move. And I think they had about a week's notice to move to... and I think that that city, as in other cities later, these notices to move were posted, tacked onto either telephone poles, put up at post offices, displayed at churches and community centers that existed, and that was the way most of us found out. We were all given orders, the head of the family was given an order to report to a certain location to get instructions on when that particular family would be expected to be out of the house, to be moved to a reception center, or assembly center, by the army -- which was run by the army.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.