<Begin Segment 7>

KL: Tell me your memories of the attack on Pearl Harbor.

MS: I remember the sirens, like I told you, which was pretty scary. You know, the kind of sirens you hear...

SO: Like an air raid.

MS: Yeah, that's it, air raid, like those sirens. To me, it was very scary.

KL: Did they go off on December 7th?

MS: I don't remember that day.

SO: I don't remember anything about when Pearl Harbor was bombed. I don't remember.

MS: I remember they used to have a lot of blackouts, you know, and we'd be outside in the evenings, and then the air raid sirens would go off. It was really scary.

KL: What do you remember about leaving Terminal Island?

MS: Leaving Terminal Island? Well, we had to leave and leave everything. We didn't have a car. We have five kids and our mother was very young, in her twenties. And we had no place to go. So I think we got a ride from someone that was going to Compton where they heard there was an abandoned Japanese schoolhouse, so we went there. Tell them about the...

KL: Do you know who that person was?

SO: That took us?

KL: Who drove you?

SO: I don't recall. I don't know how we got there, but I do remember when we got there, Mama put a blanket on the floor, and it was a big building, just one building. This is our family, the next family had their little blanket or bedspread out there, that was their family. The whole building, I think, had all these families with their little blankets or bedspreads out, and that's where we stayed. But we did go to school. I have to tell you about my first day of school.

KL: I want to hear, but let me back up a little bit. You had very, you told me before the cameras were rolling that you had very little time to leave Terminal Island.

MS: Forty-eight hours. So we left everything, we couldn't carry much except the little kids. That was how it was when we went to Manzanar, too. And they said we could take what you could carry. But we couldn't carry anything. So that was sad. I could imagine what our mother went through. So we had a blanket that was put on the floor for our family. And there wasn't much in the abandoned building, you know, it was just the building. But I was gonna say, it would have been better for us if they would have just taken us to Manzanar straight from Terminal Island.

SO: But it wasn't ready. It wasn't ready, they were building it still.

MS: Yeah, because of the fact that we didn't have to go to an in-between place, you know, where we had no place to go. And we were there long enough to even have to enroll in school. I mean, that was terrible.

SO: That was frightening, to be teased and to be hated so much to have to go to this all-white school. Can I tell you about my, what I remember?

KL: Please do.

SO: I remember the first day of school, I guess I'm in kindergarten or first grade, I'm not sure, and I was so scared I was crying -- not crying, I was screaming. Just screaming. And so the teacher tried to quiet me down, she goes, "Okay, we're going to play band now," and so she brought out all the instruments and started playing music. And I'm screaming through all this, nonstop. So then they decided to take me to my sister Toshi's classroom, and I'm screaming in there, and she can't get me to be quiet. And so then they took me to her class [indicates MS] and then she just said, "Shut up," because I was crying so hard.

KL: Did that work?

SO: Yes. I sat in the corner until we went home, you know, 'til school was out. But in her classroom, I do remember that.

KL: What was the school that you went to? Do you remember its name?

MS: Where, in Compton? The one I went to was... well, I guess it was a grammar school, so McKinley.

SO: Yeah, McKinley.

MS: Elementary school.

SO: Yeah, we walked there, I remember.

KL: Did your mom go with you on that first day, do you remember the trip to school?

SO: No, no. That's what was so frightening.

KL: What about, were there any other children in the building, in the former Japanese language school with you?

MS: There were, right? There were a bunch of kids, weren't there?

SO: Oh, yeah.

MS: The floor was...

SO: Covered with blankets.

MS: Blanket for each family.

SO: And I don't know how we ate or what we ate, I don't recall, or using the bathroom, I don't recall.

MS: I don't remember any of that either.

KL: You were little.

SO: We just remember that blanket, that was our home.

KL: Do you have any idea how your mom found out that that building was the place to go, or how she chose Compton?

SO: I think some of the other families from Terminal Island also went there, too, because I remember my friend, I remember her being in that same building.

KL: Do you know the name of that Japanese language school?

SO: No, it was just called Japanese language school. [Laughs] I think that's what it was called.

KL: Do you know what street it was on, or neighborhood or anything?

MS: No, I don't know the... we're not very observant.

KL: There was a lot going on.

SO: There was. But it felt safe there because we were among our own, you know, in our little building, to get away from all that teasing.

KL: Did the other kids go to McKinley with you?

SO: Yes, there was a bunch of, a group of us kids walking to that school, I remember. Do you?

MS: I don't remember too much, but a bunch of us all walked together. But you know, like she said, I don't even recall what we ate or how we ate, or things like that, showering or washing up or whatever.

SO: Because we were there for quite a while, it seems like, according to her picture, her school picture there.

KL: Yeah, you left in December and didn't go into Manzanar until April.

SO: That's when it was ready, right?

KL: Early spring.

SO: I remember going to Manzanar and our block did not have a restroom built in, so we had to go running, I remember running really far just to use the bathroom.

MS: Yeah. That was awful.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.