<Begin Segment 8>

AL: So what do you remember of the actual day of Pearl Harbor? How did you hear about it and what did you see?

GW: You know, it always goes back to the movie. [Laughs] I don't think it was like that at all. As far as I remember of Pearl Harbor, I don't remember people running around saying, "Pearl Harbor," or nothing like that. All I remember is that the next day, that we were, we were told that Dad was picked up, the boat, we don't know where the boat is, don't know where Dad is. And Mom had to start packing up stuff and we were going to move.

AL: It's interesting, well, of course, in the book, it talks about him, your father, owning the boat and that your brothers worked for him. In the paperwork, it says that he was a deckhand for your brothers who owned the boat. Do you know which one that is?

GW: No. As far as I know, the story goes that my father bought this boat called the Nereid, and it was financed through the cannery. And his, I think my mother's brother put some money into the boat. So that when the boat was confiscated, my mother's brother for a long time was trying to get his money out of it, and if we ever got any money from the government for the boat that he wanted his share of it because he put money into it. But as far as the ownership of boat, what I heard was that it was partly owned by the cannery, financed, and my dad and this brother.

AL: So when you said your dad was taken away, how did you find out he was taken away? He just didn't show up?

GW: Yeah. Didn't appear the next day, he was gone. You know, there wasn't anything like going to the jail to see whether he had... as far as I know.

AL: Were there other men arrested at that time?

GW: Oh, yeah.

AL: Like how many?

GW: I have no idea, but I know that all the Japanese fishermen in Terminal Island were all picked up. And I'm presuming they went to the same place that Dad was, which was Bismarck, North Dakota.

AL: When did you first hear from him and know where he was?

GW: I didn't know until he came back. I'm sure that my mom and my older, the older people in the clan would know where he was and all that. But as far as I was, I didn't know when he was coming back or any of that 'til I saw him.

AL: Were you scared?

GW: Not really. You know, when I think back to those years, I don't think I was afraid or anything. The worst thing I guess that happened to me was after camp, as far as the prejudice and all that feeling, hurt me a lot because we were sent back and lived in Long Beach in these projects where they had put up these shipbuilders, workers there. So we lived in this project in Long Beach. Sometimes my mom and I would take a bus and go downtown, and that's when the older generation of (Caucasian) people spit on Mom, and you can't do nothing about it. They tell you to, "Go home, go back to Japan," and things like that. It's very hard to take.

AL: When your dad was taken away, who stepped in to run the family? Was that your mother or your brothers?

GW: Woody. Woody basically became the man of the family. Bill was the oldest, but he relocated to New Jersey, Seabrook, New Jersey.

AL: That's after camp he went to Seabrook?

GW: No, no, that was before camp (closed). In camp, when they started allowing people to relocate back east, he left. And then my sisters and brothers went back, but during that time, Woody was the only one left in camp.

AL: So was Bill also on Terminal Island before the war? Was it just Woody or Woody and Bill?

GW: No, Bill wasn't there.

AL: Okay.

GW: But I don't think Bill ever got involved with fishing. It wasn't 'til after the war. No, it was during... it was before the war, my father actually had two boats, he had the Nereid and the Waka. The Waka was the smaller one, that's the one he gave to Woody and Bill to run. That's why maybe you heard about the storyline is that they had Woody and Bill as the owners of the boat. Well, they were, the small boat, the Waka. But the Nereid, Dad ran.

AL: Yeah, I was confused. [Laughs]

GW: And one of the things that's funny, I remember when Dad first got the Nereid, it was a pretty big boat, it was a forty-footer, and it had a diesel engine and that's what normally boats didn't have at that time. And he was gonna use it as a party boat, you know, boats go out and fish with people on them. And I think he took one trip and I went on that trip, and that was the first time I caught a barracuda. [Laughs] I can remember that, when I was that young and I was trying to reel it in. But, yeah.

AL: So what happened to the party boat plan?

GW: Well, that went away because he started making more money from fishing for mackerel.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.