Densho Digital Archive - Minoru J. Shibata Interview (denshovh-sminoru-01-0019)

<Begin Segment 19>

KL: How did you learn that you would have to leave Terminal Island? I've seen printouts of, you know, a notice that was delivered at people's houses.

MS: Houses? I don't know whether it was... I don't recall receiving any kind of a notice like that, and I didn't see any posters like that either. So it was by hearing what my mother was hearing from other people as to what was happening that I learned what had to be done.

KL: It was a very short time. What do you remember of what happened on those days? You've mentioned burning things and deciding about furniture.

MS: Yeah. Well, of course, it was all my mother had to do because I didn't know anything about selling things or whatever. Maybe I should have known at age thirteen, but anyway, she was involved in taking care of everything. And she probably talked to neighbors or whoever knew what had to be done. Because they had to close bank accounts and almost everything and get rid of whatever belonged to us furniture-wise. Which included a refrigerator I think we had only for about a year, and it was a gas refrigerator, I remember, that being unusual. Yeah, pack all their dishes and whatever. So we weren't that much of a help to her because she had to take charge of everything.

KL: How was that for her? Do you have a sense for how that affected her?

MS: Later on I could assume certain things that affected her eventually ending up... I can't think of the word... it's called schizophrenic.

KL: She had problems...

MS: Well, by the time I returned back from the army, she already had the effects of schizophrenia. I didn't know it at that time, and we didn't know what it was at that time. All we knew at that time was she was having mental problems. But I'm sure that all the stress probably had something to do with it, or increasing the possibility and bring it up as early as that. And the other stressful thing was living under the same room with more than one family. You know what happens there, two families were living under one roof, and the work.