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MA: So I wanted to go back a little bit and ask you about December 7, 1941, the day that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor and what you recall of that day and hearing the news.

BH: We had made plans to go to see my brother that Sunday.

MA: Which brother?

BH: Grant, 'cause he was at Camp, the one in Tacoma, I mean, in Olympia.

MA: Fort Lewis?

BH: Fort Lewis. So my sister, myself, and Ike Tsurui, a friend of mine, and Fumi Kitahara, another friend, the four of us got in a -- we left real early in the morning because it was dark, naturally, December. So we left probably about, I think I rounded everybody up about seven o'clock or seven-thirty, and then we headed out to Fort Lewis. And while we were driving, we didn't turn the radio on and we were just talking and whatever. And so we didn't know that the war was on. And while we were driving, we said, "Gee, look at all the..." we called it the CCC trucks. Because there was a Civilian Conservation camp that they had, different things. But they used the army camouflage trucks and stuff. So we thought that's what it was, and then it didn't dawn on us that they were pulling these cannons and everything. But thought nothing of it except that there was a whole mess of them coming down, going the opposite direction that we were going. So when we got to the sentry, the guy came up and he says, "What are you dumb Japs doing here?" And I said, "We're here to see my brother." He said, "Don't you know there's a war going on?" I said, "What war?" And he went on about -- and we didn't know where Pearl Harbor was. By that time, we turned the radio on, but those days, the radio didn't come on like it does now. It took about thirty, forty seconds for it to warm up. And then we heard President Roosevelt talking about the war and we thought, "Oh, my gosh," and our hearts just sank. And it was, just gotten daylight by that time, and we couldn't see beyond the sentry 'cause they wouldn't let us go any farther. And later I found out that Grant did see us pull up on the car there, but we couldn't get out of the car or anything, that's all. He just recognized our family car, 'cause we had a light green Oldsmobile, and I guess that's what he must have seen. But anyway, we got sent back. And then while we were driving back, we were kind of scared because they started saying things like, "There's going to be a curfew," and different things. And that's about all I remember, we were just all upset, and we just dashed home as quick as we could.

MA: Did, were there a lot of rumors at that time about what would happen?

BH: No, there was nothing. All I know is that my brother Martin came home from Japan, and later I found out that he came back on the next to the last ship that they allowed from Japan.

MA: He came back after Pearl Harbor?

BH: No, before Pearl Harbor, yeah, and things like that. So I knew there was tension between Japan and the U.S., but I didn't know anything was that close to attack or anything.

MA: And what about your parents? How did they respond to the news?

BH: The same way. They just, they were very fortunate that Grant was already back from Japan, 'cause he was in Japan going to school. And Martin had just come home from Japan, so the family was intact that way. But from that point, I was, like I say, I was at George Kawachi's working, so I just came home on the weekends. So what went on during that time, 'cause we evacuated in May, and I was with George Kawachi, so he had to evacuate, which was, I think he had to go in either March or April with the Seattle bunch to "Camp Harmony" in Puyallup.

MA: Puyallup, uh-huh.

BH: Yeah, the fairgrounds.

MA: Did the curfew that they imposed affect your work, your ability to work?

BH: Well, I stopped working for George Kawachi, 'cause he, naturally, he had to close the place, rent out stuff and things like that.

MA: So you moved home after?

BH: Yeah, so I came home. And then what I did, because of the fact that Martin and Grant aren't home, and I'm the next oldest one, my sister and I, then I sold the truck and sold the car and whatever we could sell. And even things like my portable typewriter that my parents gave me for my graduation, I never used it. But I thought, "Well, we got to bring in all the cash we can if we're going to go into a camp." And so I even sold that. But there were a lot of things that should have been sold that never got sold because we didn't have enough time. But like I mentioned, we had this skyway between the two houses, and the upstairs of the other house, I always called it a dormitory but it was just a big room. And we had bedrooms up there, and we used to play handball in there and ping pong and so on.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright ©2009 Densho and the Twin Cities JACL. All Rights Reserved.