Densho Digital Archive - Kay Shimada Interview (denshovh-skay

<Begin Segment 8>

JS: So we were talking about Pearl Harbor, and you were out in the field and you heard about that, and what did your family do to get ready to leave? Do you remember what happened?

KS: Well, there wasn't much we could do. Nobody said anything that we should do or anything. We always worried about being taken, taken away, and sure enough, they came. Yeah, we were evacuated. We all thought we were going to concentration camp, you know. We heard so much about the German concentration camps, so I thought it was gonna be quite a fate, but no, it turned out to be pretty good. Yeah, it's just like, see, we were from the country, not too many Japanese neighbors, and all of a sudden, that's all you see when you went into Tule Lake. It was quite a difference.

DG: So between Pearl Harbor and when you had to leave, what was it like going to Clarksburg High?

KS: You know, Clarksburg never segregated. They never said anything bad about us. See, half of my senior class -- I was a senior then -- half of my senior class, out of forty-two, I think twenty-two were Japanese, so whenever we went to inoculation -- before going into camp we did, was mandatory, we had to have inoculation -- so we'd go into class and there's hardly anybody in the class. Yeah, they've all left already.

DG: So people were --

KS: But quite a few, percentage wise, I'd say about thirty percent was Japanese, I think. The rest were Caucasians.

DG: So what did your family, when it became clear you were gonna have to leave, you were gonna be forced to leave, what did your parents do about your farm?

KS: They, see, they were leasing at the time, so they just let the crop go. We had some crop growing already, so we just left it and one of the, some of the neighbors came and took over, I guess. There's nothing we could do about it.

DG: What about your possessions in your house?

KS: Equipment and stuff.

DG: Equipment.

KS: Yeah, we had some trusted neighbors, so they stowed it for us. We had a car stored, and then when it came time where we could have automobiles in camps we sent for our car, and good neighbor, they took it out of storage, filled it with gas and came all the way. They went to, what was that town in Nevada? Anyway, they drove it all to a place in Nevada, and my father and my older brother went to there and they got the car. Yeah, it was quite a, you don't even expect any kind of, people to do that for you. They didn't put in extra miles or anything. They didn't, they filled up the gas and everything. They came all the way up there.

DG: Do you remember the name of that family?

KS: I really don't know. I forgot the name. I think Scribner or something like that. Name of Scribner. They had a, I think there's some of the, of course the original ones have passed away, and the kids are still around Clarksburg, other side of the river.

DG: So they kept, they took care of all of your possessions, this family?

KS: No, just the, just the car. Rest of it, we just left it. Yeah, we just had to, just locked the door and leave. We didn't own the house, so it's all rented. We, when we rented the field, the farm, well the house came with it. So I think some... the night before we left, there was a madhouse. They all came and started taking the tables and chairs and all kind of thing, because we were leaving the next day. They knew that, so they came, and yeah, they took all the dining room tables, chairs, all the furniture, whatever they could carry, radios and things like that. We couldn't take anything with us. Well, we had a suitcase our clothes were in. That's all.

DG: So the house you leased was furnished?

KS: It wasn't furnished. Oh, they had some furniture, yeah. They had some furniture, but not much. We had to furnish that. We had to buy our own tables and chairs and kitchen stove and stuff like that.

DG: So when the people were, if the people were coming right before you left, weren't they offering you any money for it?

KS: Well, we were charging, not much, but we were charging a little bit, but boy, the night before, they didn't, they didn't pay us or anything, I don't think. They just came and took it. We just had our bed to sleep in. I, even that, I guess after we left they all came and took the beds and stuff, I suppose now. Because after the war, I don't know what happened, but we, I was in the service anyway, but they were let out of camp. My brother, older brother got a discharge, special family emergency. They had to leave Tule Lake, so my oldest brother which was, he was in the service too, the Red Cross got him out so he could lead the family back to wherever. So he brought the whole family back to Sacramento, Walnut Grove, and we settled out there for a while, and then we moved to West Sacramento. We found some, some... well, one of our prewar neighbor, Japanese fellow, they owned that one land out there, about sixty acres, so he was looking for some tenants to take care of that, so came, we were just lucky that we had a neighbor like that. That's how we started farming.

DG: What was the name of that neighbor? Do you remember, in West Sacramento?

KS: I don't know. I forgot what the name, name of the person was.

DG: Were they living on the property too?

KS: Part of it, yeah. Part of it they were, because that was their, see, they were living in Clarksburg and this property was in West Sacramento, so there was hardly anything, no building at all on the farm there. So there was one small shack, probably they might've lived there busy time, so they built a little shack, and we were living in that little shack, until it burned down. [Laughs] So we had to go to our neighbor's and stay with the neighbor until we could build another house there.

JS: How did it burn down? Do you know what happened?

KS: Well, what happened was, it was a cold winter day and we had some, you know what ofuro is? A separate bathroom. Okay, so we had some electric wires going to the bathroom, bath house, it's called a bath house, and then the wires must've crossed like that and started a fire. Yeah, because it was really windy that night. Next thing you know, we were -- middle of the night, now -- so we were, see all those bright fire, so we got out of there and saved our life. Lucky we got out of there in time.

DG: Was that shortly after the war?

KS: Yeah, it wasn't too long after the war, after we settled there, yeah. 'Cause that house was, yeah, that house was, I don't know, during the war, whether somebody lived there or not. It probably was some Filipino, somebody was living there, I suppose. Because by the time I came home from the service, my father and mother and the kids were all, they cleaned up the house and they were living in there already.