<Begin Segment 5>

Q: Okay, could you tell us about, you know, getting over to the assembly center and what happened after you were arrested and you were in jail, right? How you were feeling.

FK: Well, from there, from the San Leandro jail, they finally decided to transfer me over to the Oakland jail, and they handcuffed me. See, before that, I want to go back. I don't think that the San Leandro jail had the facilities to keep a prisoner very long, because every time, when it was time for, to have my meal, two officer would come and open up the jail and handcuff me, and we would go to the restaurant and eat. And he would take the handcuffs off, naturally. And we eat, and they tell me, "That's the regulation, I'm sorry we have to do this." And so for breakfast, lunch and dinner, they took me to the restaurant. So I guess they figured they had to get rid of me as soon as they can, so finally, I was moved to the Oakland jail. There, I was there for about a week. And since I'm a federal case, I was transferred to the federal prison in San Francisco. There, where I met, I was surprised to see three other Japanese there, and I got well-acquainted with one of the Japanese Americans, a person that came from Hawaii. And he was very talkative, so he was explaining. The other Japanese, they were, see, we had some free time in the morning, where everybody goes out in the courtyard area. And they were walking around, but they wouldn't speak to me. And I assume they had their worries. This fellow that came from Hawaii, this Japanese fellow, we just got attached to each other, I guess. He was telling me all kinds of story of Hawaii and everything, but he also knew how they got there, too. I assume they did some talking. And one of the Japanese Americans, he was very young. Well, he was a college student, and he came back to Centerville, the town he lived in, to get his typewriter. He forgot, he left it, he was gonna go back to Nevada, I guess. But someone spotted him, so he climbed up a tree. And the next door neighbor spotted him, I guess, and called the police and said, "Hey, there's a Jap up in the tree." So that's how he got caught. And then the other one, he was a cook. And he was a cook for a long time for this family, I guess, and they were attached to him, and they gave him a farewell party for him. And he was supposed to leave, but he hid down in the pantry instead of leaving. And one night they heard some noise in the kitchen, so they went over to investigate, there he was in the kitchen looking for some food. So that's how he got caught.

So anyway, one day, I got a call from the guard, and told me I had a visitor. And I didn't know who it was. I knew all my friends were in camp or they were in the military. But I went anyway. And the man introduced himself to me and went to the visiting room, and he was a very nice fellow, easy to talk to. And he told me, he asked me how... no, he asked me how I was treated in the federal prison, and I said, "Fine." He asked me if I needed some cigarettes or something like that, you know, just to break the ice, and we talked for a while. And then he said, "Would you like for me to represent you at the hearing?" And I said, "Well, I never had done this before, so I'll be glad to have someone to represent me." I said, "By the way," I asked him, "who do you represent?" And he told me the American Civil Liberties Union, and I thought it was maybe a church or something like that.

[Interruption]

Q: Tell us about your girlfriend, and the circumstances where you, what happened when you got arrested.

FK: Well, at first, my parents and my girl's parents didn't mind us going together just as long as we were friends. But when we got serious, seriously, we were practically engaged, then they wanted to break it up, yeah. They just didn't want us to get any serious than we were. So that's what happened. So I never have seen her after this incident happened when we got caught. They called her in, too. And I see the police chief talking to her for quite a while, and then took her home. So that was the end of it. I never did see her again.

Q: Do you know what they talked about?

FK: I haven't got the slightest idea.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.