<Begin Segment 8>

KL: This is tape two. Today is December 5, 2013, and we're --

WI: Two more days. We could have waited two more. [Laughs]

KL: I know, I was about 1940-something. But yeah, we're continuing an interview with Willie Ito, and we had left off talking about your family's reaction to the news that Japan had attacked Pearl Harbor. And I'd like to hear some kind of about the broader community of response. How were things at school the next day, how did people around Japantown react?

WI: I think the swiftness in how things started to happen was really amazing. Because the next day, Monday, we went to school, I was in grammar school, Raphael Weill, and my classmate came to class, and all of a sudden, he started to sob, and we were wondering, gee, what happened? Well, it turned out that the FBI came that night and arrested his father just like that. And so all of a sudden we started hearing stories of different prominent people in our community suddenly arrested overnight and hauled away. And then the severity of what is happening suddenly became a reality. Because up until then, there was a lot of speculation, gee, I wonder what's going to happen. And then when we --

KL: How did people respond to your classmate whose father had been arrested and who started crying? What did the teacher do, what did you guys do?

WI: Well, the teacher, of course, took him aside, took him out of the class, because we were all like, gee, what's he crying for? And so the teacher, of course, I remember, was very sympathetic right up until the day we left. But it was a mixed class, so it was basically a real curiosity as to why he was so upset and crying. We had no idea it had anything to do with Pearl Harbor. And then, of course, the rest of the kids in the class, they weren't so, you might say, aware of the happenings like we were, because just the day before, the whole family and community was going through such a stressful thing. But as these things started to happen, we became more aware that, my gosh, this is truly, truly serious. I came home from school and walked in, and there was two FBI agents, real big guys, with their fedora hats, and it was like December, January, so it's cold in San Francisco, so they had all these big Humphrey Bogart type overcoats, and they were going through all of our drawers. My mother and father was just kind of sitting there, kind of pointing out where certain things are. They were scrutinizing for contrabands, if we had samurai swords, family heirlooms, cameras, knives, weapons, anything that could be weapons, anything that could be considered subversive like books written in Japanese language, all these things were being confiscated.

And when I saw Snow White for the first time, my first little gift that I got, or souvenir from the movie was this little Dopey bank which sat on my dresser. Well, I panicked thinking that the FBI is going to confiscate my little Dopey bank, so I ran upstairs to my bedroom, and it was still sitting on the dresser, and so I was somewhat relieved about that. But I could see, if my little Dopey bank gave me such a start, when my parents was going through with photos and heirlooms and stuff that my grandparents, well, my dad especially, coming from, back from Japan, brought so many heirlooms and they're all being taken away. Or I remember they were saying, "We got to get rid of all of this stuff, all the books in Japanese and all that, and burn it or trash it or throw it away, because it will be considered subversive."

KL: Did they do that before the FBI came, or was that after?

WI: That rumor started to transcend.

KL: Immediately?

WI: Better get rid of all of these things, and then the FBI started making their personal calls and started rounding up things of that nature. By then, the word of us being incarcerated to camps became more prevalent. And so the rumor was, we knew what was happening in Nazi Germany and in Europe and all that. So they said, well, that's it, we're gonna all be sent to camps no matter who wins, U.S. or Japan, we're just going to be lined up and executed and buried right in big common grave, and that is going to be our demise.

KL: Even before the war you think people had that awareness of what was going on?

WI: Well, it was during this whole thing about being evacuated to camps, that these kind of rumors started to transpire. Of course, panic set in to a lot of older. And, of course, a lot of the more elderly says, "Shikata ga nai," it's like, "What will be will be," if this is the way it's going to be, they'll be prepared for it mentally or whatever. My dad had just bought a new home in 1939, and so he felt very optimistic that we will eventually be returning home. And so we had a, my dad had a real good Chinese family friend, so he offered our home for the Chuck family to move in and watch over our house and they can stay there rent free and whatever. So we were one of the very fortunate that came back and had a home to come back to you. Whereas many of those that were displaced came back, no home, they set up cots at the Buddhist church gymnasium, or at that YMCA, and families all stayed in cots and all that. So, ironically, spending three years in camp, sleeping on cots and everything, war ends, you come back to your home, and you're still living under those conditions.

San Francisco's Japantown was at that time totally vacated, but Hunter's Point, Alameda shipyard, a lot of the defense work was happening in the San Francisco Bay area. So a lot of the jobs were opening up for those working the shipyards. So a lot of their migration from the southern states came to the Bay Area to work in these areas. Well the big African American migration came and settled in Japantown, because virtually it was empty. And so they came in and they settled in the areas, and so when we were allowed to return home, came back to San Francisco's Japantown, and it was Bop City. It was fried chicken restaurants and African American nightclubs, a lot of bars and whatever. So it took a little while for the Japanese to reclaim the area.

KL: Where was... the family that rented your house, is that Chuck, C-H-U-C-K?

WI: Yeah.

KL: Were they living in Japantown?

WI: Yeah, in our home.

KL: Before that, I mean.

WI: Oh, no. Before that, I guess... I'm not really too sure if they came from Chinatown, but Chuck was, to me, my recollection is he was like my father, sort of Hawaiian, and spoke a little pidgin. So I kept thinking, gee, I wonder if Chuck was an old friend of my dad's from the Hawaiian island days. So where he came from and where he returned, I was never too clear on that.

KL: He'd be an interesting observer of that change, with all the new people coming in.

WI: Yes. Because also, too, there was... see, after the earthquake, the South Park area of San Francisco, which was the original Japan settlement, was more or less displaced. So many of the Japanese didn't know where to move to. And so Asians felt comfortable with other Asians, so a lot of Japanese businesses formed in San Francisco's Chinatown. And so after the war, we had one of the early Japanese restaurants right in the outskirts of Chinatown, and a lot of curio and souvenir shops, Japanese in Chinatown. But also there was a number of Chinese that migrated to the old, to the actually new at that time, Japantown area, setting up businesses. So we had a lot of Chinese restaurants and little shops and Chinese laundry.

KL: Were those relationships between people in San Francisco affected, do you think, by the political violence between Japan and China or were relations pretty removed that?

WI: Well, we always got along very well with the local Chinese. And, of course, San Francisco Japanese migration... the Chinese were just a little ahead of that period, but then eventually the Asians just have that tendency to kind of stay together. So I think a lot of the early Japanese immigrants, even though they didn't speak the same language and whatever, just sort of felt more comfortable being with other Asians. And it's rather intimidating for the little Japanese immigrants coming over and seeing all these great big Caucasians, you know. So I think they tended to stay within their own community. So like I was telling you earlier, I felt intimidated leaving my Japantown community to come all the way down to Los Angeles to go to work for a big studio like Walt Disney's.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.