Densho Digital Archive - Tom I. Mine Interview (denshovh-mtom

<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Okay, so Tom, we're gonna start the second segment now. The first segment, we learned a lot about sports and the beginning of the farming. But now I want to jump to December 7, 1941. And can you, can you tell me when you heard about the bombing of Pearl Harbor? Do you remember that day?

TM: Yeah. I took a bunch of girls, I was a basketball coach at the church, Buddhist church, and we had a little tournament in San Jose, that was a Saturday. And well, they said war happened, broke out, so, you know...

TI: And how did you hear that? Where, did someone tell --

TM: We just heard the news.

TI: Someone came up and just told you?

TM: Yeah. So everybody was stunned, and just couldn't, nobody could say anything, yeah, we were all stunned. That was December 7, 1941, or '42.

TI: No, '41, yeah.

TM: '41, yeah, December.

TI: Yeah, so a Sunday, December 7th.

TM: Yeah, Sunday.

TI: And do you recall if, how the girls reacted?

TM: Well, I think everything was quiet. Nobody knew what was going on. Just quiet and you couldn't say anything because gee, everybody was shocked.

TI: And so, and so you drove from San Jose?

TM: Well, San Jose, we were coming home, that night we were, finished the tournament.

TI: And so it was just really quiet.

TM: Quiet, oh, gosh, you could hear a pin drop. Everybody was so shocked. We had fifteen girls, I drove, we had three fellows drive the girls up there and come back. And the shocking thing about that, come home and the FBI came along and picked my father up and took him to San Francisco. See, all the Nisei, not Nisei, Issei parents that were active in Japanese community, they were all taken in by FBI.

TI: And so what was your dad doing with the Japanese community?

TM: Well, he was just a member of the Japanese community, he was, he didn't have any large part, just carry on the, part of the duties. And for, just, that was the procedure that, that happened. They took all your key, that Japanese, not Japanese American, but Japanese, Issei people, my brother-in-law was taken, too, but he was head of the kendo and all that, Japanese, so they all had, were taken here and taken to San Francisco, and they went various places like Crystal City, Bismarck.