<Begin Segment 10>

[This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator.]

SY: We ended up (with) him getting arrested by the FBI, but let's talk a little bit about what you remember about what happened to you and your mother and your brother from that point, from that day.

GN: Just like he predicted, "Nobody's going to dare to take us away," (I had said. How wrong I was). Well, there were some really brave guys like the resisters and Gordon Hirabayashi and Min Yasui, I really give them a lot of credit. Because thinking about my own sons today, (if) they tried to do something like that to them, they'd say no. They'd just be like those Occupy Wall Street people. They wouldn't go. And probably if I was of age, that's just what I would have done. (When the City of Whittier) tried to put this big oil pipeline through here, I laid down in the front of the big tractor that was digging the trough. I protested it until the very end. We got the news media out and everything, and they probably would have just crushed me. But Yosh and my son got panic-stricken. When the tractor was that far away from me [indicates one foot] and I wouldn't budge, and I was lying across the path of that ditch-digger, they yanked me out of there. Both of them bodily yanked me out of there.

SY: When was this, Grace?

GN: Oh, I don't know. When was that? Now we're having oil controversies, and we've been involved in that battle. So there are all these files over there. I'm working on a million and one things. And when I heard Bill Watanabe (of Little Tokyo Service Center) talk about how he's a latent hippie; he went over there (to L.A. City Hall) every day to Occupy Wall Street to aid and abet them. [Laughs] "Amen, young man. I'm even older than you." And a lot of my friends did go down there, down to (L.A.) City Hall, and I (would have gone) too, but I'm just too wobbly and feeble, I would have gotten in the way.

SY: But at the time your grandfather was arrested, you were only still how old?

GN: I was fifteen.

SY: And do you remember what your mother had to go through?

GN: Well, it was very difficult. We had just a few weeks. And we were more fortunate than people on Terminal Island who only had forty-eight hours and their husbands were taken away, their boats had been taken away from them.

SY: So you remember being given four weeks.

GN: Well, it wasn't four weeks, but it was probably less than (two) weeks. I remember we had about two weeks, but more than forty-eight hours. I remember that we had a family friend and we just told them to take custody of the house. We kept one bedroom, it was a four-bedroom house. My grandfather built it for (his) family (originally). It had a lock on (the room where we stored our belongings we left behind), and we rolled up all the rugs and I remember putting moth balls in the rugs and rolling them up and sticking them in (that room we could lock). We left a lot of furniture out, but some of the valuables I think we stuck in that room. Then they rented it out and whoever it was didn't break the lock and go in there. We put some things down in the basement. The house was on a slope and it had kind of a little basement. (We) put some things in there and we left.

SY: So you were fortunate you didn't have to sell anything, or did you?

GN: Oh, well, we gave a lot of things away. Now I wish I had my Shirley Temple doll, it would be worth a mint now. My brother's Lionel train, that would be worth a mint. My grandchildren would have enjoyed them a lot. All those things, they just had to go. But my grandfather said, "The family treasures we're not going to get rid of." So my aunt had Christine Janssen as a chemistry teacher at Roosevelt High School. She had kept in contact with her through the years because Christine Janssen always felt that my aunt was the most outstanding chemistry student she ever had had at Roosevelt High School. My aunt was a brilliant woman. I have pictures of the Janssens' old car. That's why I have all those pictures out that I wanted to show you, because it's historic. They were Quakers, and took those things home to their house. They had a full basement in the house in South Pasadena. Dr. Janssen was a professor of chemistry at Cal Tech, and they took all of our valuables and kept them (during) the war. They came to visit us on their (gasoline) ration tickets.

SY: So your grandfather's family, you all were able to stay together with your aunts on your mother's side?

GN: My mother's side. They all were able to stay together, and then the Japanese consulate who was getting really paranoid (and) they put all their books on sale. So what do my aunts do when we were having to go away? They went down on the P car down to Little Tokyo and bought all these books for a penny a pound. They bought all these (wonderful Japanese) books. Well, guess who has them now? I have all these wonderful books on Japanese history and birds of Japan and flowers of Japan.

SY: And you kept those in the basement, or did you keep them in your own house?

GN: The Janssens'.

SY: The Janssens kept all that for you?

GN: My aunts were the ones that bought all that stuff. They're really valuable books. I don't know what we're going to do with all these books. Our kids want some of them but not that many. Because they all have big libraries of their own. My daughter's house, I can't believe all the books she has.

SY: That's amazing. So the Janssens, did they stay in touch with you during the war?

GN: Oh, yes, until they died. And then there were the Youngkens, too. They came to help at Union Church, and Don and Vera Youngken, they lived in Highland Park, that's where my grandfather's house was, and they kept some things, too. So everything was intact.

SY: And they were not Quakers?

GN: They kept the samurai swords. My grandfather comes from a samurai family and he had all those kinds of things. All the samurai swords, all the scrolls, really wonderful, beautiful scrolls, all of his own calligraphy on scrolls, they kept all that.

SY: Were they Quakers as well?

GN: The Youngkins were Christian. They weren't Quakers. But Don and Vera Youngkin, they both came faithfully to help the Union Church and Reverend Nicholson was a Quaker. My son and my daughter Linda is a Quaker also, and she married a Quaker. My daughter-in-law, they're both active in the San Francisco Friends (meeting) Paula and Daniel are responsible for heading the drive. They got something like eighty thousand blankets to Afghanistan (refugees).

SY: Do you think they were influenced by the Quaker friends you had during the war, or was it something they came to on their own?

GN: Well, they believe in that. They practice what they preach, that their religion is in their actions and their doing and their living.

SY: That's wonderful.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.