<Begin Segment 9>

RP: So what do you remember about December 7, 1941?

MN: That, all I know is... Japan, actually I didn't know about Hawaii. All it says, it's middle of the ocean island, Hawaiian Islands, between United States and Hawaii and Japan. It's middle of. And I didn't know Hawaii, what it was. I thought it was just a Hawaiian Island, no, no military or nothing. Well, we heard Japan bombed it. Then after that a lot of things happened. They get, we got notice in February that we had to be ready for evacuation and all that. So we had to get a lot of things ready and Pop had to get rid of his little Ford truck that he was using gardening and things like that.

RP: And how did he do that? Did he sell the truck or did he give it to somebody?

MN: He, I think he sold it for dirt cheap, just get rid of it. 'Cause we couldn't, we couldn't keep it. Try to sell it you know. Because time is short and everything. In fact, they got so many days to get our things packed. Either store or sell it. Well, a lot of people try to store so they left it with a friend or something. But when they came back from camp it's all gone. Nothing was there. So the people that had it, they must have sold it or something. So actually when we came out of camp we didn't have nothing. Pop didn't have anything.

RP: Now, you mentioned things did change pretty drastically. There were, there was a curfew.

MN: Yeah, there was a curfew, yeah. We couldn't go out at nighttime.

RP: How about the travel? There was also a travel restriction that...

MN: I think they say five miles or something, a radius. That's all. So you know...

RP: Did that affect your father because he was a gardener. He traveled around.

MN: Yeah. Well, daytime it was okay.

RP: And how about, you mentioned that he had some guns when he was, when he was on the farm, the strawberry farm?

MN: Yeah.

RP: Did he still have those when the war broke out? Did he have to turn those in?

MN: No. I think somehow he got rid of it. I don't remember. After we came into L.A, or when I came back from Japan, he didn't have that. In the meantime I don't know what happened. He must have got rid of it or something.

RP: So how were you treated at school after Pearl Harbor?

MN: I guess I didn't notice. I was treated okay. But they stayed away from us for one thing. Because we were Japanese see. Yeah. So, they didn't try to hurt us or anything. They just stayed away from us. So we naturally we just get together ourselves too. So that was it until evacuation time came.

RP: And so did you have a part in packing up things and getting rid of things? What did you do? Or did you have...

MN: We had to sort out what we gonna take with us or can't, gonna store. They said no, we don't have no place to store it. So we just have to get rid of it. Either junk it or just leave it there until these junk, junk man, people used to come with the horses and all that. Yeah, they used to collect all those. Yeah, so we, we left all those stuff. Only thing we packed was what we were gonna carry with us into camp. What we could carry and that's it.

RP: Uh-huh, yeah. Other than the necessities and essential things, did you take anything else special to you?

MN: No. Actually they told us for one thing we're going out to area, open area. There's a lot of rattlesnakes so they told us to get a high top boots. Not ankle shoes. High top boots. So, we go out and buy high top boots. So when we got to Manzanar, sure enough.

RP: Did you see snakes there?

MN: Oh, yeah. A lot of rattlesnakes. That's why I they mentioned it. You need high top boots because you were going out in the desert or something.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.