<Begin Segment 13>

TI: Okay, so now I want to go back to your father. So we talked about how he heard it on the radio, he tried to listen more on the shortwave radio, wasn't sure what was going to happen. Did you, did you hear him talk about the war and what he thought about it during this time? This was in those early...

KM: Earlier, earlier before, uh-huh. Yeah, because he was saying... he didn't say anything about fighting the U.S., but he says, "Look out, it's gonna spread." Of course, when Roosevelt put on that embargo where we couldn't buy oil or rubber, that's when Japan said, "Well, we're going to get it then. We're going to go get the rubber in Borneo and Southeast Asia, and also there's oil down there, too, we'll get that." So if they had, didn't enforce the embargo, I think this wouldn't have happened. But that's what it was, just... we'll that's the same thing that's going on, they put embargo on Iran.

TI: So in the bike shop, when the mechanics, you're all working on bikes, an so you're... are people kind of talking about things like that?

KM: No. No, they're doing their own job. There was no talk about that. Completely a surprise. Actually, December 7th was a complete surprise.

TI: Now, at this point, you were about twenty-one?

KM: About twenty, twenty-one, yeah.

TI: Twenty, twenty-one. So you were, were you done with school, or were you going to school at this time?

KM: I was still going to school, yeah.

TI: So where were you going to school at this...

KM: I think I was going to business college then, yeah. Nothing was said, either.

TI: So no one said anything to you?

KM: No. Nobody came up to me and called me a dirty name or anything like that.

TI: Were you kind of expecting something to happen, maybe?

KM: Always expecting something. Expecting to be beat up or gang involvement, three or four guys jumping you. But nothing happened.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho and Preserving California's Japantowns. All Rights Reserved.