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SK: Five weeks after instruction started, on Sunday, December the 7th, Japan attacked Pearl Harbor. I was at home early that morning studying for my Monday's lessons. I heard the news on the radio. I ran downstairs and told my father, "Japan has attacked Pearl Harbor." My father said, "Never happened. That's a lie," he says, "German airplanes camouflaged as Japanese airplanes had attacked Pearl Harbor." But throughout the day, every fifteen minutes I would come downstairs and tell my father, "The attack at Pearl Harbor is still going on." Finally, towards the late evening, he could no longer fight the situation. He, he was heartbroken, said Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor and life would never be the same for him and his family again. And the next morning when we report to school, Colonel Weckerling and his deputy commandant Joseph Leaky were there. All the students were assembled in class A, and Weckerling told us, "Your training has as contingency plan for the possibility of war is now a grim reality. I expect you to study hard and become a confident linguist and be able to do combat intelligence in the war that's just started."

gky: Tell me, how did you feel at this time? I mean, you're, you're five weeks into this new program, you're starting to train Americans in Japanese, now Japan's attacked and you don't know what's gonna happen to you.

SK: Everybody was confused. Nobody knew what to do. The newspapers, both the Japanese newspapers in San Francisco that my father read, the newspapers that I read, the San Francisco Examiner, San Francisco Chronicle, had all kinds of weird information. The next day President Roosevelt declared war between the United States and Japan, and very soon Italy and Germany declared war against the United States. The whole country was in a state of confusion, and as an example, Private Kazuo Kozaki at the school, on Monday, December the 8th, knocked on John Aiso's door and he said, Sensei, I'd like to talk to you. And John said, "Sit down, please go ahead." And Kozaki said, "No, I can't talk here. Let's go out on the greenway," on the green runway, and out there on the runway with no buildings in sight, just San Francisco Bay and the hills of Marin in the background. Kozaki told John Aiso, "Let's run for it. Let's hide in the hills somewhere." And John said, "Why?" And Kozaki said, "I know that the army is going to kill all of us," and Aiso was able to calm him, calm him down and get him back to study. So the situation was, was tense. As teachers we had to do our job in an efficient and meaningful way, so we conducted our training every day. And the army put guards on the San Francisco Bay Bridge that I crossed every day to go to work, and all people with Oriental faces had to drive off to a certain area and be questioned by army guards. Chinese people quickly put up signs in their automobiles, "I am a Chinese." But I, being a Japanese, there's nothing I could do but to show my credentials, but I never had any problems at all with the army guards. They looked at my credentials, my pass from the Fourth Army of San Francisco, and I was able to cross the bridge every day, coming and going.

gky: Did you have the license plates, the PSF license plates then?

SK: Yes. Soon as I got to work, in order to enter the Presidio every day, that was my pass to go into the Presidio.

gky: So would you just tell me what, your car had the PSC, I mean PSF license plates?

SK: Well, I had identification papers that I carried in my wallet, that I was employed by the Fourth Army Presidio of San Francisco, signed and approved by General DeWitt. And very soon General DeWitt ordered that, on information and signals, there was potential trouble, all the Bay Area, San Francisco, the Presidio included, were blacked out, the reason being that there were rumors that the Japanese air force in, on aircraft carriers, were bombing places. One Japanese submarine actually bombed an air, an oil field in Santa Barbara, and there were rumors that the Japanese were going to attack San Francisco, so there were frequent blackouts. When these occurred, I had to report to school twice a week from seven to nine to help our students study, and when the blackouts were on I couldn't drive in the streets, so I had to wait in there, wait there at the school until eleven o'clock sometimes, when the blackouts were called off. Then I could drive across the bridge to go home. And then the newspapers began to print hysterical articles. Attorney General Earl Warren with the state of California said, "The Japanese in California have not attacked or bombed or created any sabotage yet, but that means that they are waiting for a more opportune time." The Native Sons of the Golden West, a patriotic society, began to publish articles in the newspapers. The Japanese population in California cannot be permitted to continue to live in California. Evacuate them. The Los Angeles media especially was very virulent in their propaganda. Walter Lippman, a national commentator, columnist, began to scream for evacuation of Japanese. City of Los Angeles was very powerful, and Japanese American employees, city of Los Angeles, the state capitol in Sacramento, were fired. And a tremendous amount of publicity was written up in the newspapers putting tremendous pressure on General DeWitt, who had been promoted from Commander of the Fourth Army to Commander of the Western Defense Command, and he wrote back to his bosses in Washington regarding the situation in California and indicating that there was a military danger, a hazard to the United States by permitting Japanese, first generation Japanese and second generation Japanese, from continuing to live in California, Oregon, and Washington, and Alaska. Finally, on February the 19th, 1942, President Roosevelt signed evacuation, excuse me, Executive Order 9066, and under this order General DeWitt was authorized to remove all Japanese Americans living in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California to the interior.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.