<Begin Segment 4>

SF: Okay, now I'd like to move ahead and talk a little bit about the war years. Before Pearl Harbor, how did your family talk about the relationship between the United States and Japan?

GH: I don't think that we discussed that very much. My dad wasn't very active in the, any organizations, like right after the war broke out, the FBI came around and they gathered up all the guys that were active in all the related organizations with Japan, and put 'em in the concentration camps. That was before evacuation.

SF: So your dad was kind of, not a community leader, so he wasn't high-profile?

GH: Right, right. Yeah.

SF: What organizations did your dad belong to?

GH: At the time, I really don't know.

SF: Did the family go to church, for example?

GH: I'm sure he did, but then he wasn't active in it, you know. I think he's primarily trying to raise the family.

SF: Did your dad ever talk about returning to Japan?

GH: Returning to Japan?

SF: Uh-huh.

GH: I don't think he... he might have, much before the war, but then not after. Maybe in his later years, he might have wanted to go back, but he didn't.

SF: So he always saw his future and the future of his family as being in America, I guess. Is that right?

GH: I would think so, yeah.

SF: Okay. What do you remember about the days immediately after Pearl Harbor?

GH: Well, it was kind of a tough time. We're always worried that they would come and search our place, or take my dad, because we're a single-parent family, and if they took our dad, there was only my older brother, and he was only like, I guess at that time he was about twenty. He'd have to keep the family going. So it was kind of a worry. A lot of the neighbors were taken in, and... it was...

SF: So it was kind of mostly a feeling of anxiety about possibly taking your dad, or not knowing what was going to happen?

GH: Yeah, mostly that we didn't know what was going to happen.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Densho and The Japanese American Museum of San Jose. All Rights Reserved.