<Begin Segment 10>

KL: Did you have a sense before, just backing up, before the U.S. entered the war, before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, did you, like through your grandmother or your other grandparents, were they aware of events in Japan and Japan's aggression and the U.S.'s sort of involvement in trade and military supply and stuff? Did they, was there a sense in your family, do you think, that the countries were going to collide in war?

HK: Well, I think when they heard about Pearl Harbor, I think that's what I remember. Before that, of course, I don't remember them being concerned about it. But as soon as Pearl Harbor happened, then my parents, of course, were worried what would happen to all of us. So that's why we moved back to my grandmother's in Loomis.

KL: What do, can you tell us some details of what you recall of both news of the attack and also what the months after were like?

HK: Well, I remember that we had an old radio and then we would all be listening to the radio, 'cause my parents were very concerned. They were saying, "Oh no, this is terrible," type of thing. And so, of course, us kids, we didn't know what even war was, or bombing, we didn't even understand it all. But it sounded very serious, foreboding, and scary. It was scary, mostly.

KL: We were talking a little bit, the Masadas and I last night, about just the history of racism in the decades before Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, racism in the United States and in California. Did your family have experiences with -- I mean, obviously with the land laws, that was a big part of your family's experience, but was there day to day prejudice that they experienced in their farming or with the neighbors or in, just the business community? Or do you know? You were real little.

HK: I was too little to understand any of that, but of course I know there was kind of like a competition and envy of people that were doing better than others, that type of thing.

KL: Do you think your parents experienced that? Did they ever talk about that?

HK: No, but just from seeing the pictures, you can see that, like some families were, looked like they were doing very well, whereas I know my family, from the pictures, it didn't look like they were doing too well, as far as clothes and so forth. And so you could tell that there was differences in the economic level. It was family by family, so there was quite a bit of, I think, competitiveness and this type of thing, just among even the Japanese families.

KL: And you were too little to be in school before the war, right?

HK: Right.

KL: Yeah.

HK: 'Cause I didn't really start going to school until -- well, in Tule Lake I think they had, like, a preschool or kindergarten, so I think I went to school then.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.