Densho Digital Archive - Fred Oda Interview (denshovh-ofred

<Begin Segment 15>

TI: So Fred, we're going to now start the second hour of the interview. And so the first hour, we talked about pretty much prewar Watsonville, a little bit about your family, things like that. So for the second hour, I want to start with, so now you're working at the Hiura's apple drying plant. And we talked about it a little bit, but on December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor, can you tell me how you heard about the bombing?

FO: Yeah, well, I told you I was working in drying, we had the radio on. And then we heard it on the radio.

TI: And what was the reaction of the people around you?

FO: I couldn't believe it, you know. I realized, the way I look at is that United States wanted to go in war, but Roosevelt said, "I will not send your son to foreign soil," and stuff like that. So they forced Japan to start that war by boycotting their steel import and stuff like that, and made it real hard for them. Because Japan, they have no raw materials, so you import everything, and they made sure that they weren't getting any steel, oil and all that stuff. So Japan had to go war to get it. They went to Indies, Dutch Indies and those place.

TI: Now, was this something that you had thought, at this time, when you were eighteen years old, did you have that? Or was this something that later on you read more about? Or was this kind of what you were thinking?

FO: Yeah, yeah.

TI: So this is what you thought back then?

FO: At that time?

TI: Yeah, at that time.

FO: Yeah, because I read where England, British, they broke the Japanese code, they knew what was happening, this and that. [Laughs]

TI: And so when you look at it, you think a lot of the blame of the start of the war was the American pressure against Japan.

FO: Yeah, economic.

TI: Kind of forcing them into a corner and making it hard for them.

FO: Yeah.

TI: Now, the people around you, so you mentioned there were other people working at this drying plant, did you guys talk about this? Or what kind of words or feelings were going on?

FO: I don't remember about that.

TI: So did you continue working or did they shut the plant down?

FO: Yeah, we worked. Let's see, yeah, because we were rounded up February to go into assembly center, so we didn't work too long.

TI: But I was just thinking, on that day, though, that day, did anything change on that Sunday when you were at work? I mean, it was just a regular work day?

FO: Yeah. I told you we worked seven days.

TI: And so when you returned home...

FO: On the way home, yeah, in those days, any big thing happened, kids would be selling newspaper on the street corners, you know. And, "Hey, Japs bombed Pearl Harbor," and all that, you know. Then it dawned on me, by god, it is a real bombing.

TI: And did you talk with your parents or with your sisters or anything like that about what happened? Did your dad say anything about it?

FO: Well, they figured that we were born and raised here, so we're Americans. Because some Japanese had that dual citizenship. I didn't have that, yeah. So later, when they said they're going to start evacuating the Japanese, I thought, "Oh, yeah, just the folks, you know. But we won't go because we're citizens." [Laughs] Then it was all wrong.