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RP: So tell us about December 7, 1942.

MN: Okay.

RP: I'm sorry, 1941. [Laughs]

MN: '41, yeah. That was, when we heard we couldn't believe what happened. I mean, for what? We didn't know the war was coming on. And we thought, and then we thought, well -- and we didn't have neighbor neighbors where we were living up here on Los Feliz, so it was all open space, like flower fields -- and then we thought, "Well, maybe we better not venture out too much," not knowing what the public was gonna be like. Now, people that came to the shop and knew us, they were fine.

RP: Nothing changed.

MN: Nothing changed there. But what happened was we were, we had these, they said they were from the FBI, come to the house, and usually toward evening and they would be very, very blunt about things. And they would come in, unannounced, and they would pull up the carpeting, and we had this old house, but pull it up to see if we had any trap doors or things down there in this house. And they looked, and we had, my sister had some, she brought some of these swords back, souvenirs from Japan. Well, they took those. They took the cameras. They said, "Well, you'll get 'em back," but we never saw it. That was the end of that. Whatever. And at the shop, we had this three level flower shop where, ground level and then there's a few steps, there's a working level, and then there's another two or three steps and that was the upper level where we did the big things. They insisted we had a cellar there hiding things, and they would stomp on that place, and we said, "There isn't anything." No, they would stomp on that place and just insist. But there wasn't any, we had nothing to hide. And here, we had no men in the family, just my mother, and my brother just died. And I thought, "Oh my gosh." But when they did come to the house, oh my goodness, they just insisted, just pull up the carpeting and just left it, nothing. Very --

RP: What was their attitude like?

MN: Their attitude? Like Mr., Mr. Big, you know? Like they were some, like they were higher [inaudible] or something, just really, they had the authority to do it. No excuses, nothing.

RP: No warrants.

MN: No, nothing. And you just stand there wondering, "Why are they doing all this?" And so their, later they were saying, "Well, maybe it's because my sister had gone to Japan and came back." But to us, they had nothing to do with it. I don't know. But they did, they took a lot of the souvenirs and things. They said that it was a contraband, so they took 'em.

RP: You never saw 'em again.

MN: No, we never saw any of those things again.

RP: So were you, you were visited once at the house?

MN: More than once.

RP: More than once, and then also at the flower shop.

MN: Well yes, 'cause it was connected. And so they would come up and they figure, well, they best, we must have a cellar or something here. I think... but they were very, very, like they're the hierarchy. They were must Mr., "You do as we say." We didn't say anything. We didn't give 'em any trouble. But we couldn't understand why they had to be like that. I --

RP: Was your -- I'm sorry, go ahead.

MN: I've seen some pictures of, I don't know, some of these officials. They wore coats and the tie and a suit and a hat. That's exactly how they dressed. [Laughs]

RP: How many of them were --

MN: Usually, usually they came in twos or threes. Not just one.

RP: Did you know certain Issei community leaders who were picked up by the FBI? Such as maybe the language school instructor?

MN: Let's see...

RP: People that were close to you or that you knew?

MN: That were close to us? No, not really. I know some of the fathers. Why, I don't know. And I have no idea why they were picked up. And some were, some of the fathers were sent down to, somewhere in Arizona, someplace down...

RP: Santa Fe?

MN: Somewhere. Not up at Tule Lake. They were sent to, they were saying down there they were not treated too well. I thought, "Well gosh, if we had my dad, I wonder what would've happened." I don't know. But they seemed to know who we had in the family, and they knew my sister had come back from Japan, but that was... they thought, well, maybe we had some connection. [Laughs]

RP: Were you affected at all by the travel restrictions and the curfew, business-wise or socially?

MN: Socially, yes. We were very, very young, careful, very careful. And we stayed, when we had curfew it was dark, everywhere was dark, and so we had this one room which was in the breakfast room, and we were able to cover up the, it was an inside room, so we were covering up, and quietly we listened. And you could hear people walking on Los Feliz, the people that were, I guess, neighborhood people walking around there. But pitch dark, my goodness.

RP: Those were the blackout.

MN: It was just blackout, just completely blackout. You'd be surprised how black it gets.

KP: When was the Battle of L.A.?

RP: I think it was in February. February, do you recall a, there was a scare, an alarm that there was some type of attack, war's coming, and antiaircraft guns opened up? There was sort of a panic throughout the city about an imminent attack.

MN: I'm not too sure about that.

RP: How were you feeling, as the, as the days and weeks progressed, what was your attitude? You were kind of, somewhat apprehensive about going to certain places.

MN: Certain places.

RP: Keeping a low profile. Was there any sense of panic or fear, or what was going through your mind? Before the order was actually...

MN: Well, we just figured if we kind of kept to ourselves and didn't dare go into areas where we thought was gonna be kind of dangerous, we wouldn't be affected and we wouldn't have to worry about anything. 'Course, we didn't have close neighbors, which was nice. It was all open fields there.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.