<Begin Segment 15>

TI: Okay, so let's move to December 7, 1941, and that's when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. Do the two of you, where were the two of you when that happened? So I'll start with you, Eiko, where were you when you heard about the bombing?

EN: I think that's the day that we had, a Japanese teacher came to have Japanese lessons. And then she told my mother that, "Now, I don't think I could come to teach you now, the children now, because we're gonna have problems." So that's the last day we had Japanese lessons.

TI: And do you recall any comments or anything from your parents when they heard that Japan bombed Pearl Harbor? Did they say anything to, like, the kids?

EN: No, we didn't talk too much about it. But the only thing is, we had problem afterwards, was going to buy groceries and things.

TI: So describe that. What do you mean by problems with groceries?

EN: They didn't want to sell the groceries to us, so my brother would order things, go ahead and order things at night, and then they have to go pick it up at night.

TI: And so your parents, they wouldn't buy their groceries from the Japanese grocery stores? It'd be a different grocery store?

EN: Yes.

TI: So why didn't your parents go to the Japanese grocery stores?

EN: I think they closed it, didn't they?

YN: They may have. I don't remember that part.

TI: Oh, so before that happened, they would go to the Japanese grocery stores?

EN: Uh-huh.

TI: But they were closed down or something, so they went to another. Okay.

EN: Because Japanese grocery store, they don't sell a lot of things, like fresh meat. Maybe fish or something like that.

TI: Yoshiko, after December 7th, when you would go to school, did you notice any differences in terms of how people treated you?

YN: They didn't treat me badly, but I was really shocked. I don't know, it kind of bothered me, feeling bad that had happened.

TI: And what do you mean you felt bad? How did, what do you mean by that? Why did you feel bad?

YN: Because the other people's feelings. I didn't talk to anybody about it, but I had that kind of feeling where they may not like us because we were Japanese.

TI: But you said you didn't ever hear anything, though, but you just felt that way?

YN: Yeah. It was just my feeling. But used to hear things from the public, from far distance, being, naming bad names. But we just ignore those things.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Watsonville - Santa Cruz JACL. All Rights Reserved.