<Begin Segment 27>

TI: Now, were some people using the churches or the language school to store things? Were they storing things...

LW: Yeah. Like Sacramento had that kaikan where they play basketball, lot of people put it in there. Whereas Walnut Grove, they put it in the Buddhist church, in the Japanese school. But when they came back, the people got to have a place to live or sleep. So they had to take all that out. My family moved in to one of those Japanese schools, one of the rooms there. But I wasn't home, so I didn't know what was going on.

TI: But that's good to know, that, so right after the war, even though you weren't here, your family stayed in the language school along with some other families, too. So they stayed there temporarily until they could find...

LW: Yeah. See, so a lot of those people, either they took a chance that, just board it up and hoping they'll come back maybe one or two years. And some of 'em, they have a good neighbor to keep an eye on it for me, something like that.

TI: But business-wise, most of 'em, they just board it up and took off. Like the Hayashis, nobody was there until they came back. But luckily, the building was still there.

TI: Did the people who stayed in Walnut Grove during the war, so whether they were Chinese or white or Filipino or something else, did any of them help watch the properties, the ones that just boarded them up or...

LW: No, I don't think, not too many were that close. Because that one, that Korean dentist that was in there, in Walnut Grove, they're the only ones. They stayed toward the end, too, but I don't know how they survived because all the customer was Japanese.

TI: So I remember that. So there was a dentist, Korean dentist, he had two daughters, I believe. How did the Japanese community accept the Korean, this Korean family into the community? I mean, so they weren't Japanese, they were Korean, and I wonder if there was...

LW: Well, like the two girls, one of 'em was the same age as mine, we went to the same school and we get along. They were more like Japanese than Korean, because they didn't speak Korean language. What happened, the mother left the husband, see. I don't know, she just took off and never came back. So the father raised the girls. But at the same time that... the Kawamura barber shop, there's that daughter that's kind of a, taking care of it that did the housework and take care of the kids and everything like that. Because she was old enough, he was maybe thirty years older, something like that. But they speak nothing but Japanese, even though they're Korean.

TI: Okay. So during this time period before you left Walnut Grove, do you recall any interactions with either the Chinese or the whites, and any, yeah, what that was like? So did the Chinese ever say anything about the Japanese leaving, was there any friction or tension between...

LW: Not that I know of. Only thing, I think benefit more Chinese then. Because after the Japanese left, all the farmers, there's no farming, so they had to take over, and they did real good. And basically they own the, they bought the property. Most of 'em that, Chinese farmers, they all came out good.

TI: Oh, so the Chinese farmers were able, the community, the farmers were able to thrive.

LW: They got bigger.

TI: Okay. And how about any interactions with the whites?

LW: I don't know too much about that.

TI: Were there ever, did you ever hear of any events or incidences of, like, prejudice against Japanese during this time? Like people angry at Japanese Americans for what happened at Pearl Harbor?

LW: Well, see, the trouble is, I was small, and we are limited. You could only go three miles, so really, I didn't have any communication with that. Only thing I know is that we left the school, we didn't finish the school, high school.

JS: So you were at Courtland High School?

LW: Courtland High School for up to, I think it was about April, I think, we got evacuated.

JS: Do you remember any reaction from your classmates about what was happening?

LW: No, because there's more Japanese, so they can't, they gave us a bad time because we have more control.

TI: And when the orders started arriving, that Japanese would be leaving, do you recall if the school did anything in terms of, like an assembly or announcement letting the other students know what was happening?

LW: No, nothing like that. I don't recall at all those things there.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.