<Begin Segment 4>

RP: You talked about, in the previous interview, about how you heard about Pearl Harbor and the attack.

MY: I don't know if I told, I was playing with my cousins because my mother and father went to a football game at Gilmore Stadium, which no longer exists. I think the Hollywood Bears and the... I can't remember. But my father was a terrific football fan, and so my two younger brothers and I, we went up two blocks to my aunt and uncle's home. They had a grocery store on Folsom, and we were playing, and then I can't, believe it's my cousin or my uncle came and said -- it was in the afternoon, Sunday afternoon, December 7th -- "Japan dropped a bomb in Pearl Harbor. There's a war." And we were playing house, we were playing like a little tea party, so we said, "Okay, so what's, what do we do next?" We just continued playing. And then my mother and father came to pick us up quite early, and we said, "The football game's over?" Because usually they came to pick us up around dinnertime. And my father told me that they were at the football game and they announced that Pearl Harbor had been bombed, and they, they said, "Oh, so Pearl Harbor was bombed," they just continued playing the game. But when the announcer said all police officers and fire department employees were to report back to their stations immediately, not even to go home, then my father thought, "Uh-oh, maybe we should leave too." And so that's when they came to pick us up. And then the very next day, Monday, I don't know if we went to, I can't remember if we went to school or not, but after that life really changed. I couldn't go anywhere by myself or just with my brother, until things settled down. And then once things had settled down, we went to school together, to elementary school, but we weren't as free, shall we say, to go to many different places. We played, stayed pretty much close to home. And the thing that affected me the most was when my uncle was taken away by the FBI agents. They just came and took him.

RP: How did that affect you?

MY: Initially it didn't affect me too much because I suppose I had trust in adults. You know, this is just what I thought internally, I didn't even ask my mother and father, "Well, if the police officers came, maybe there was something wrong with the school." 'Cause he was on the board of education, I believe, for a Japanese language school. I think it was for Chuo Gakuen. And then when I saw my aunt just break down, I mean, she was just hysterical, and I said, "Well, maybe it is very serious." And then day by day I realized how serious it was when he didn't return. I thought he was gonna return just after a day or two, and then when I found out more, that he wasn't even allowed to get his jacket or shoes, he had to go with his slippers on -- 'cause it was about eight, I think, or nine o'clock at night and they just took him. And she didn't even know where he was for a while, and then after a while we found out, I think he was at Terminal Island. They didn't talk much about it, and if they did speak about it, I wasn't allowed to be a part of it.

RP: But you were very curious and affected by it.

MY: Oh yes, yes. Because he was, quote, my "favorite uncle." He was so kind to all of us, always played games with us and always had some sort of special treat to eat. [Laughs] And he had a beautiful fish pond in the backyard, and we always went to feed the goldfish back there. And he was just a special uncle.

RP: And where did he live?

MY: He lived on Fourth Street, Fourth and Evergreen. 2944 East Third Street, right across the street from Evergreen Playground, not too far from the Evergreen Cemetery. And then there was, I think, a church close by, not in the... then the Buddhist temple was on, there was one, I think, on First and Mott, and then the Japanese language school is on Mott Street too, I remember. And I was able to walk to all of those places. But that's where my uncle lived.

RP: And did he build that koi pond?

MY: I don't know if my father, I mean my uncle, built that koi pond. I just knew that it was always there, a fish pond.

RP: Is that the first pond that you remember seeing as a kid?

MY: Yes. That's the first. My father never built a fish pond on Floral Drive.

RP: And you spoke about the, just the displeasure of seeing your favorite uncle go away. Was it a period of, sort of a time of frightfulness for you as a kid?

MY: Not, I don't think I was so much frightened. I still had trust in adults. And then after a month or two I think that they did find out that, maybe that he was in Terminal Island, but I do know that he was sent to Santa Fe, New Mexico. And so by the time we were to be evacuated from Los Angeles they knew where he was. And they all, my father also knew that because of where my uncle lived geographically, that his sister-in-law and his nephew would be sent to Manzanar, and so that's when my father decided that he wanted to go to Manzanar too to support his sister-in-law and his nephew. And we were sent to camps based upon the geographic area where you lived. Certain people in certain parts of Los Angeles would go to this camp, certain part, I don't know. But anyway, all I know is my father said we had to go to Manzanar, and then where we lived we were supposed to go to another camp, and so he had to find an address close, or within the area where his brother lived. And when he went to register he drove around and then he found there was one address that he knew no other Japanese family would use, and it was a fire station. And so he used the address of a fire station as his place of residence so that he would be directed to go to Manzanar.

RP: That's brilliant.

MY: Yes. [Laughs] I mean, he was determined to help his sister-in-law and nephew, and he wasn't going to rely on others that were, that had authority to make that switch. He was gonna make the switch at the very beginning so that they would just send him to Manzanar.

RP: Right.

MY: But it was an unhappy time for me because all my aunts, uncles, my grandmother, they, geographically maybe, found all addresses where they could go together. They all went to Heart Mountain, Wyoming, so I had to say goodbye to all of them. That was very sad.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.