<Begin Segment 11>
SY: -- the, where your parents were when Pearl Harbor was bombed. And so did your mother talk about what happened after this event, this Sunday?
BW: Well, so they did talk about relocating, and then they instituted a curfew and then they didn't allow people to leave, so those plans were sort of dashed. I'm not sure when they got the notice, but a few months later, it must've been around maybe March or something of '42, they were told to report -- and I think they, they went to a bus depot, I believe in Burbank somewhere, and from there they went to Manzanar. And Mrs. Meichtry was the one who drove them to Burbank and took them to the bus depot.
SY: And as far as you know, what happened between the time that they declared this curfew, as far as your father's business went, and the time that they were actually told to leave?
BW: Yeah, so Japanese were not allowed to drive after the curfew, or during the curfew, and so my father had no way of taking the flowers to the flower market. So fortunately, because the other uncles, Tomiji and Jiukichi, they had trucks too, to take their flowers to the market, so they took my father's flowers to the market and so that way the business was able to keep going. But there were those kinds of problems that they had to deal with during the curfew period.
SY: And do you know whatever happened to the trucks and to the equipment?
BW: They had to sell them. It's typical, I think, where you had to try to liquidate whatever you had. And my mother told me an interesting story of during the curfew, that Kinjiro got sick and so he was coughing one night, so my mother turned on the lights to see what was wrong and try to help him, and they apparently had patrols walking around. During the curfew you couldn't turn on your lights, and so someone knocks on the door and says, "Your lights are on. You should turn it off." And so my mother said, thought it was kind of scary to, number one, having people monitor, but number two, she was angry that she couldn't take care of her kid. I thought, yeah, it's hard for us growing up to imagine a time like that, but... yeah, so that was, that was the curfew period. And then I guess that must've lasted, but it was after my parents left for Manzanar. That wasn't an issue.
SY: So this, these little stories that your mother told you came much later, right? Like for example, that story, she told after, way after camp was over, when she was...
BW: Yeah, I mean, it's not like my mother sat down and told stories, although she was quite loquacious and loved to talk and she would talk on and on, but she never, like, initiated it. And I believe the story about my brother came from my older brother. He told me that.
SY: Your, and in the meantime, was your father one who shared any of this history with you?
BW: Not much. My father didn't say too much. I didn't really ask him either. I should have, but he died in 1990 and a lot of things I didn't really ask until much later.
<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.