<Begin Segment 5>

RP: What do you remember about December 7, 1941?

KY: Well, we had moved in '33 and this was about seven or eight months... seven or eight years later but I remember we were...my two brothers and I went out duck hunting and we came home and they said, "Japan attacked Pearl Harbor." I didn't even know where Pearl Harbor was. [Laughs] But anyway they said that they think the President is going to call, declare a war and of course that's when we heard about it but I thought, "Holy cow what does that mean?" I didn't think much more about it being a spoiled teenager. I didn't think too much about it. In fact, when I think back on it, I thought why should I worry, I'm an American. Like the rest of the neighbor kids around there, I thought I was just like 'em.

RP: Did you have any concerns about what... how you'd be treated at school the next day?

KY: Not really, I didn't think too much about it. I kind of was thinking that well, yeah, wonder how the riding the bus because there were not many friends who rode this same bus. I usually got on and sat in the front seat and that was it. And the others got in on the bus back a ways but nobody said anything that I recall, I didn't hear anybody say anything at all.

RP: And where did you attend high school?

KY: In Brigham City which is next... just about seven, eight miles from Corinne. I attended elementary school in Corinne. Corinne at that time was, oh, maybe five or six hundred people, I don't know, very small town.

RP: So in the months that followed, did your life change very much, January, February 1942? How about your father's job, was --

KY: Yeah, it did, with the war it was I think about the first or second or something around there of February -- excuse me -- the FBI came out and went out to the work site. Dad was working on some... maybe you heard of Promontory Point? That's where the railroads met. Out near that spot, they went out there and brought him in, somebody said it was at gunpoint. I don't know. Anyway, they brought him in and I was in school so when I came home it was about four o'clock. Then Monday morning they said, "Pa's got to go to leave the house at five o'clock," and he was getting ready to go and I remember them saying that he's going to Claude Gilbert's place. Claude was a friend of his and Claude had heard somehow about having to leave and said he could stay at his place.

Anyway, when I came home from school anyway they said we had to be out of here, our house, by five o'clock tomorrow. And I thought holy cow, five o'clock tomorrow. We got a household of furniture, two feet of snow on the ground and where we going to move to? And they said, oh, there's a house that Audrey Johnson has on the other side of town, it's vacant so that's where we're going to go. And you know, we don't have a truck or anything and they said that there was a Japanese farmer who we knew and they volunteered, they had a couple older sons, same age as my older brothers. They were going to bring their truck and the next day and (have) our stuff up to that house and they said, oh, they were out there clearing the road to the house. The road to the house was about couple of blocks (from the street). It went down a swale and up on the side hill and some of the drifts they said were almost waist deep on the road. But they had to use shovels to shovel it. So they must have spent all that day on that Monday getting to the house. Anyway, I said, gee maybe I'd better stay home from school. I was fifteen years old. And at that time I had not missed a day of school in the three years that I had attended already. And they said, oh, we want you to get perfect attendance so you got to go to school. So I went to school. [Laughs] And they moved everything the next day they said when you come home, just head for the Johnson's house. That's what I did.

RP: So who told you that you had to move? Was it the FBI?

KY: Well, it was an (FBI) agent there who watched my dad like a hawk I guess. They said he was there and I saw him and there was also FBI agents at the depot which was a kind of the center for communications on the railroad. And they'd call (about) trains and stuff like that. But with only one track going in, but anyway there was an FBI agent there and I don't know where some of the others were. But they said there was a couple car loads. I didn't see them but they said it must be a couple car loads out there someplace. All I remember they said, ah, we can't be on the railroad property at all after five o'clock and I thought well, gee whiz, I might have to go across, in fact somebody had to go across the railroad tracks from Johnson's place to get to the post office to get our mail. But I guess they weren't so strict about walking across the railroad tracks.

RP: They just didn't want you loitering around there.

KY: Yeah, they said, "Don't loiter around the railroad tracks. Don't, you know, hang around the railroad tracks." We couldn't go to the stock yard where we used to play down there. Couldn't go see my neighbors who were friends of mine, the two Mexican boys I played with all the time. They were right there (near) the railroad tracks.

RP: So everything changed very dramatically and suddenly?

KY: Yeah, it was pretty... mainly because of the FBI. Other people around there said, "Why can't you come and play?" Why can't you do this? Or why can't you do that?

RP: Was your father the only Japanese working on the railroad in the town at that time?

KY: Yeah, he knew some of, all of the farmers around there, yeah, he and mother knew them but they knew them, friends and visited with them. Mother wanted somebody to talk to, she hadn't used Japanese for so long. But anyway, yeah, they became friends with Japanese around there. But it was kind of a... we were (in a) way outcasts among the Japanese because we had a reputation of being snot nosed. [Laughs] [Referring to wife] She knows about that, she's (from) a neighboring town and her family and other farmers around there. In fact, there was an incident when we were in Kelton, I don't think I wrote about that. But anyway, the incident in (which) we moved, mother and kids moved to Honeyville, a nearby town by Brigham City for the (older) kids to get ready to go to school and this was during the summer time. While we were there, my sister came into the bedroom to get my slipper and she came into the bedroom and she let out a blood curdling scream and I wondered what the hell is going on? And I jumped out of bed and ran down the hall and Mother was pulling the washing machine away from door and we were all going to leave the house and run to the neighbors. We were being invaded by somebody, right? I don't know who they were but I don't think anybody ever found out who they were. But anyway, they scared the dickens out of us and we went back and a couple of nights later they had put screens, oh, my sister says that the guy was under my bed. And I can't imagine how he was under my bed but anyway, as I turned the corner to go around to the kitchen door, a shovel came down the hallway and I remember jumping up and the shovel went right under my legs. Otherwise I could have had my legs cut by that flying shovel. But went to the neighbors place and you could see guys milling around in the main hall way, big dining area there. This was... we lived in the church. And anyway there were some guys milling around in there and when we went back they had dumped the silverware onto the floor and that's all I remember, what else they did I don't know.

But anyway, a few nights later, they had already put screens on the windows and about three nights later they cut the screen, scared the heck out of us. A couple nights later we had a friend came over and brought a shotgun and was sleeping over and in the middle of the night Mother heard something and yelled for him to get up and he slept right through it. [Laughs] But anyway after that we moved back to Kelton. And that's where shortly thereafter, that's when we moved to Corinne. But anyway we thought somebody's trying to run us out of the house or something. But whether that was discrimination I don't know but it could've been, we kind of figured years later that maybe it was, they didn't want any more Japanese living in this town where there were already a number of farmers there.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.