<Begin Segment 8>

RP: Let's just go back to the, to December 7, 1941.

FN: Uh-huh.

RP: That was Sunday. And do you recall how you heard the news of the attack on Pearl Harbor?

FN: Well, I was eating. That was my day off. So I was eating breakfast at our home and then heard on the radio that the Pearl Harbor... oh, I was sick. I mean, you know, I was American. I said, Japan doing things like that, I just didn't think too much of them. And I was eating breakfast and I heard it and no, I was really sick.

RP: Did you have any inclination at all to, to enlist at that point, in the military?

FN: Well, the friend of mine and I before the December, we, when the army... so my friend, I said, "Hey, Fred, we don't want to go in the army and march." So he and I we went to apply to join the navy in Santa Monica. And they looked at the two of us and they, they knew I think that war was going to start or something because they looked at us and we said, "No, we can't take you two." He said, "You two can sink a battleship." So, I mean, right there and then we were discriminated because we had Japanese ancestry and they must have known that something was cooking. So to me it wasn't exactly a sneak attack on Japan's part because they knew but they didn't know when or where or what. But they knew something was gonna come up because they, they won't take us in the navy. But they'll take us in the army. But they didn't send us. The people that was already in the army they got sent back east some place and all in one group.

RP: And you weren't drafted before the war either.

FN: I was drafted, well, yeah, but I was too light so they, I was 4-F.

RP: When were you drafted?

FN: When?

RP: Was, it was before the war?

FN: Before the war, yeah. And I went and they, I was too light. I think I must have weighed over a hundred and two. Well, even that picture shows how skinning I was. And they say, "You're too light." And I didn't... before the war they was real strict about the weight and everything. And my eyesight was bad too, so I was a 4-Fer.

RP: So after you were fired from the produce job, manager job at Roberts...

FN: Uh-huh.

RP: Is that when you got involved with the flower business, right after that?

FN: Yeah, uh-huh.

RP: And who did you work for?

FN: San Lorenzo.

RP: You started with San Lorenzo.

FN: Uh-huh.

RP: Okay.

FN: I was with them for thirty-four years.

RP: Wow. And do you recall some of the restrictions that were placed on Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor? The curfew...

FN: Oh, we can curfew, we couldn't go over five miles and we can't go, I mean we weren't able to go see our friends because they're over five miles away, so my sister and I we used to sneak out and then go see the friends and they, they lived in Culver City and we were in Santa Monica. You know, some park there. We used to sneak out and go see them now and then.

RP: Right. So there was a travel restriction.

FN: Yeah.

RP: A curfew.

FN: Curfew.

RP: And did, and they also wanted you to hand over cameras or rifles, any...

FN: Oh yeah, uh-huh.

RP: Did you have any of that that you had to bring into the police station?

FN: Camera and stuff, yeah. I think all I had was camera or something that was restricted.

RP: The other experience that a number of people recall is the FBI coming in and --

FN: Oh, yeah.

RP: -- picking up Issei leaders.

FN: Yeah, I mean, they came and they searched our house and everything. I mean, to me, if you're an American citizen why should you, they go... but as I say, U.S. government didn't trust us so they searched our house and my brother had a little can posted onto the house there that he was using a tennis ball to practice basketball, and the FBI guy looks at it and he says, "Is that a shortwave radio?" I mean, they were stupid. I mean, they, a lot of them, they came out and they didn't know what, what we were. They were just treating us like "enemy aliens." And, I didn't appreciate that at all. I mean I didn't feel anything like that. They made you feel like you're not a citizen anymore. They, they mistrusted... it seemed like the government mistrusted us. So I guess that's why they sent us to relocation center. Because most of the... they didn't trust the Japanese Americans at all.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.