<Begin Segment 10>

AD: Tell me, I'm gonna go back to camp here, Ed. Tell me, what did your family lose when you were evacuated?

ET: Well, we had a good-sized business, and my father was actually, rightfully he's the owner of that particular business. That business still goes on even after the war. I went back to help my cousin's family, and they were papa-mama store at the time, but now, they must have four hundred workers working. It's huge. When we closed up, I was the only one left, really, to close up both the... there was about three different businesses, retail business and wholesale business, and importing-exporting and distribution business. They sold food. I don't know. Do you know anything about Seattle, Uwajimaya, that's the company. They changed to Uwajimaya because that was our Tacoma branch store. And I didn't want to go back to start again. A lot of people ask, "Are you sorry," that I didn't go back, I'm not. [Laughs] I love to eat the stuff, but then I don't like to sell it.

AD: Tell us, though, but right when you got evacuated, what all did your family lose?

ET: Well, I think it's probably everything we have. Bank account, everything.

AD: Start... tell us, maybe just give us some context. Say, "When we were evacuated, we lost..."

ET: Well, I think around that time, there was about seventy thousand dollars cash that I knew the company had. It was hard-earned cash at the time. And then merchandise, maybe about another hundred thousand dollars was merchandise, it was given away. We had trucks and cars and things like that, amounts to quite a few thousand dollars, and that was all gone. So we didn't get anything back, really. My personal loss, I made a claim and I got some of that back. But anything like ownership starts, bank account, that was gone.

AD: How do you think your dad or you felt about losing all of that?

ET: What do you mean?

Off camera: How did that feel for your family, especially your parents, to lose...

ET: Okay, that's the part that it kind of makes me feel very uncomfortable. Because I could have kept most of that myself, they would have never known. I feel very honest about the whole thing and I feel very good about it, but I have never had to defend it. So a lot of people think, "Maybe Ed got most of that fortune." We didn't. [Laughs] We just... and I have some friends in Washington, D.C., that we could have gone, and probably would help. I think it's almost a Pandora's box maybe, to open that up, it would be a little bit more problems. This is about the only time I tell people about this because of the fact that Hide and I really didn't have any claim against the past. But we did lose everything. But those were items that you lose, but then the real sense, business, all the old connections and so forth are still there. So we reactivated as soon as possible for them. And it's a huge, huge business. I was in banking and I brought some of the Uwajimaya people into the bank that we were in, and he rose up to the Board of Directors of Bank of America. [Laughs] I can't remember, he was getting about $2,800 a month just to be on the board. So did real good. More power to him.

HT: That was when it was Seafirst, isn't it?

ET: Yeah, well, he actually had to do with the transformation of Seafirst into Bank of America. And I think he's... I got a letter that Tom Foley is going to be talking on the 21st at the Columbia Tower, Tomio has -- that's my cousin -- has that, and he's very close to Tom Foley now.

AD: Tell us, Ed, how were the losses for your family different than the losses for Heidi's family?

HT: Well, his is more businesses.

ET: Mine is pretty much corporation, big corporation.

HT: Whereas our is just personal.

ET: And besides, I did have some things lost. We were storing things into a church at the time. Most of that came back, about half of 'em were gone. That's personal loss.

AD: Did you guys lose more than Heidi's family?

HT: Oh, yeah. They had more.

ET: Well, it's hard to say, because I don't know what Heidi's family lost. They had a truck, Model T.

HT: Model A, you know.

ET: Model A?

HT: Things like that, but it was a long time ago. It's hard to say. And never cried about it. After we lost it, it's gone. Like my mom says, "Shikata ga nai," it's gone. So we just accept it.

ET: How are we doing, okay?

AD: You guys are doing great. Say that again, Heidi, about...

HT: Yeah, that's what my mom said, "Shikata ga nai," there's nothing we can do about it. So just grit our teeth and go on.

ET: Most evacuees really used that word, shikata ga nai, gaman. That's the key, gaman. Persevere.

AD: Could you describe that one more time, "gaman"?

ET: Gaman is like patience, and we always tell the kids, "Gaman," or tell each other. And that's just patience. But the real meaning is "persevere," and it had the meaning of brighter things to come in the future. And it's kind of a faith. Don't lose that faith.

AD: That's where we say a lot of young people don't have it. That's the reason why there's lots of divorces and things like that. No patience at all. You want it, you want it right now.

ET: In a way it's a kind of word that... I wouldn't say it's coined strictly by Japanese Americans. I see some people do that. I remember a few people here in town that odds are so against them, but yet they came through and win the life's battle. I know several people in this town achieved that. And it's the same thing, it's a nice thing to be recognized.

AD: What do you think about -- part of the video's going to be used for educational purposes. Why do you think kids these days should know what happened during World War II?

ET: Well, I think we should always think about who could suffer from this kind of situation.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.