Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Rose Tanaka Interview
Narrator: Rose Tanaka
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 9, 2011
Densho ID: denshovh-trose_2-01-0012

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AL: So did... I know you were talking about Captain Williams, but just before that, after Pearl Harbor, did the FBI or anybody come?

RT: Yes. The FBI immediately after World War II started, after the attack, okay, and I digress just a little bit. As soon as the attack occurred, we had a couple of fellows in jeeps who came to the top of the highest hill behind Captain Williams, and each day they would go up there and watch, look over the ocean and spot, try to find any warships, any submarines or whatever they thought was dangerous like an attack approaching. So that was their job, there were two fellows who just went up the hill and stayed there night and day. And Captain Williams was very good to them, too, and invited them in for coffee and refreshments and that kind of thing. And at the same time he was kind to us. So after the war started, the FBI did come to check on my father. They came in and they asked for Nobutaro Hanawa. And my father said, "I'm not Nobutaru Hanawa," and he could prove that he was, from his papers, that he was Shintaro Hanawa, they had the first name wrong. So the FBI went away. And then, shortly after that, the Executive Order on February 19, 1942, came out in which they ordered the evacuation or the... first of all it was, not the evacuation, but we were declared in a military zone one and two, and we were in zone one which was the one next to the coastline, and that froze us from doing anything. The first, in the first couple of weeks it was possible for people, if they had the ability, to move out of this area and go out of that zone and take up residence in another place. Most of the population as far as I could tell had, did not have the ability to move out financially, and just pile all their goods onto a truck and move out. The other was that there was a high feeling of discrimination by all the states in the west, and people had tried to go and were stopped at the borders and were told they couldn't enter. I know that the Naganos were able to leave. They, as I said, were successful artichoke farmers, and they were able to go and move inland to another state in the Midwest, I believe.

My father heard from co-farmers that there was a place in Reedley, California, where we could sit out the war. And, of course, he felt that the war wouldn't last that long, and this being a large country, that there's no chance that Japan would take over the United States. He said, "We'll just go and sit out the war there." So he made arrangements for us to go to Reedley and live for a while. First of all, Captain Williams said to me, "Rosie, you need to finish your year as a sophomore in high school. You need to finish your year of high school, and so you could live with Gladys and me, and I'll take care of you." He said, "I'll write a letter and it'll be okay, I'll write a letter to General DeWitt," and so he did, and told him that he would be responsible for me. And, of course, the upshot of that was that he got an immediate reply saying there would be no exceptions, I would not be able to. But my parents had moved to Reedley and I stayed with the, Captain Williams for about two weeks, I believe, until we got the response back.

The second thing he did was he saw this field of lettuce that needed to be harvested that my father had abandoned in this move, and he went out there and, one way or another, he harvested that crop of lettuce, loaded it on his truck, I don't know, he may have had to hire some hired people, hands to do that. But he drove that truck down to Los Angeles to the market and sold the crop of lettuce. And by then, of course, farm produce was very much in need because all the young people were leaving, they had armed forces to feed and all that. So the prices were good, and so he received a certain amount of money for that crop, and he drove them with the money and took it to Reedley and put the money in my father's hands and said, "Here is the money for your crop of lettuce." So that was the second thing he did.

After my father had moved to Reedley, the FBI got their facts straight, and they indeed wanted Shintaro Hanawa, not Nobutaro Hanawa, and they went through our family belongings and looked at all the literature, letters, because my parents had also been in touch with the families back in Japan, and tried to see if there was anything in these letters that indicated that there was allegiance to the emperor there. But what happened is that they just went ahead and said, okay, the next day they came and said, "We're going to take you into custody." And my father knew that was the writing on the wall, that he would have to be taken in, as so many of the other heads of households were taken in, hundreds of them.

And when Captain Williams got word that my father had been taken in, he was up in arms. He said, "They can't do that. They can't just take him in and keep him without charges." So he put on his full dress uniform, with gold braid and all his military badges and everything on, and he went up to... I think it was Monterey where the camp was that they had my father at that time. And he said, "I'm Captain Williams and I'm here for a hearing. You're holding Mr. Hanawa here without charges, and I'm here for a hearing for him. I want to know why you're holding him." And the camp directors were quite surprised at this rather impressive looking man at the gate, asking for this, and so they said, "Well, we'll have a hearing this afternoon," so they did have a hearing to accommodate him. And Captain Williams sat and they had this hearing, and they questioned my father and asked him all these questions that could have been intimidating and accusatory, but that did not, but there was nothing. It turned out that their decision was that they had nothing that they could pin on him to justify holding him as a prisoner. And this was a prisoner, he was a prisoner of an "enemy alien prison camp," this was not a relocation center, but it was for "enemy aliens." And so they said, "Well, I guess we will release him. However, we can't just release him unless the family is already in a camp."

At that point, where we were living in Reedley was area number two, and it too became, came under orders to be evacuated. So the people knew that, all the Japanese Americans and Japanese people knew that they would be evacuated and have to go to relocation centers, and they would have to go to Poston, probably Poston or Gila, Arizona. And my mother said she wanted us to go into Manzanar because that way if we go early, then my father would be released to us. The sooner we were in camp, the sooner he would be released. And so she knew some people at the hospital at Manzanar and said, "I have a daughter who is..." I don't know how she put it, it might have been a language problem, but she said she is a nurse. And they said, "Well, we could use nurses here." Well, my sister was a nursing student, actually, at the University of Cal at Berkeley. And so they said, "Well, we could use people here at the hospital," so they, on our behalf were able to arrange for a place for us to stay in Manzanar. And so we voluntarily got ourselves to Manzanar, my brothers happened to have a truck available, farm truck available, put a few belongings on. So unlike some of the other people, we were able to take my mother's sewing machine and her bed. So we had a few more things, family belongings that we were able to take, and we went to Manzanar, and we were in Block 30. And that was the block where people from Florin and Elk Grove were, mostly. So camp was pretty much full at the time.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2011 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.