Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0014)

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TI: So we're gonna start the second hour, Mas. So why don't we, we talked a lot about the history of Watsonville and your family history, and we started talking about your personal memories. I want to go back now to December 7, 1941, and you mentioned you were playing with a friend that day. Can you, I mean, you were young then, you were, you were six. What did you sense when people found out about the bombing of Pearl Harbor?

MH: Well, I was playing, and my brother Tsuyoshi came after me. We lived a block away from the school, and he just grabbed me and said, "We're going home." I didn't want to go home, I was having so much fun. And he says, "No, we have to go home." And he could have explained about Pearl Harbor and such, I would not have understood. I didn't want to go. But anyway, realized that things had changed dramatically overnight. In a split instant, things had changed. Everybody's mood had changed, everybody's apprehensive, not knowing. There's, there's a kind of a news blackout. Lot of rumors are flying, and so it was hard to get accurate information. So we just stayed, stayed close to home. Fortunately, the police chief, Peter Graves, was a good friend of the Japanese American community, and because the police station was in Japantown. So he told us basically, told everyone not, not to be afraid, so that was reassuring.

TI: And what was it like when you went back to school? Did, did you have any comments from classmates or the teacher?

MH: Not that I, not that I can recall. Miss Kelly was, was kind. And I'm told that my brothers had Miss Flores, and later on I'll have Miss Flores in the eighth grade. There were a number of teachers who were supportive of us, they knew us. So that was tremendously helpful. There were ministers of the various churches who not only read the Bible, but read the Constitution of the United States, and they were supportive. So, but it was good feeling. There was some animosity with a few -- and I say a few -- Chinese and Chinese Americans, especially after the "Rape of Nanking" and such. They had some stores, and if we go into the store, they looked at us suspiciously. And yet Canton Market, Lew Kim, he was from Canton. And we had been doing business there for years; we would go to the store and buy things that would be on our tag, you know, we'd put it on the tag. Well, we had a tag of ninety dollars, and ninety dollars was a lot of money in those days. And when we were to evacuate, we went to pay the ninety dollars, our bill, he said, "Forget it." He canceled the debt and he says, "You're gonna need the money." And when we came back, he was still at the store, and he welcomed us back. So until he closed the store, we did business at his Canton Market.

TI: Wow, that's a, that's a pretty impressive story. That's an impressive man to have done that.

MH: And he was Chinese, a Chinese immigrant, and he was so kind to us.

TI: Wow, that's good.