<Begin Segment 7>

KL: What do you recall... well, first of all, I guess I should ask if your parents were, or if you and your sisters were in touch with any relatives in Japan, or if your family had any awareness of sort of the collision course that the two countries were on?

GM: No, I was not aware, they never told us. I don't even know if my parents were aware when Pearl Harbor was attacked. I just heard that for the first time, everyone was shocked that I know of.

KL: How did you hear the news?

GM: You know, I don't remember except that I must have been told by my parents. But you know, my two aunts were in this country, my father's two sisters and my mother's two sisters, they were all in this country. But you know, what I remember the most, it's going ahead in years, but when we were allowed to leave Manzanar, between the time we left and the time the war ended, our family lived with my aunt's family in Azusa. And that's when the news came over the radio that the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and my mother's parents were, I think, four blocks from the center of the blast. So one relative was out of town visiting someone, but the rest perished in the bomb. But I remember the looks on my mother, my aunt's faces when they heard over the radio, that was something horrible. I still remember the look on their faces when they heard it over the radio because if the bomb dropped in the center of Hiroshima, for sure, they lived in the center of Hiroshima, so their home was just destroyed.

KL: Were you able to have any kind of a letter-writing relationship or anything with those grandparents?

GM: No. I never knew them, I never spoke to them.

KL: How did life change for you after Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor?

GM: Drastically, but more drastically for my parents. His farming came to a halt, he was arrested because he was an officer of the Japanese school. Myself as a nine year old, we just sort of went along with the tide. And even when we were interned in Manzanar, it was no big deal. It was a lot of fun, we just woke up and played every day. But my parents suffered a lot, both monetarily and emotionally. When we got our retribution, the $20,000 retribution from the government, my parents had passed away and I just wished that they were alive to have received that. Because they were the ones that suffered the most.

KL: Can you walk us through some details of those months? You said your father had to stop farming. How and why did that happen?

GM: Well, as far as I know, rather immediately, all families of Japanese descent were put on a restricted area, it was either five or fifteen miles you couldn't drive out of. So his farming came to a stop. I don't know, they didn't say too much, but I know a lot happened.

KL: Do you know what happened to the land? I assume he was leasing.

GM: Yes, he was leasing because in those days, the Japanese families, I'm pretty sure this is a fact, they could not own property to farm. So all the farmlands where you could lease or rent it or something.

KL: And this was midwinter, so nothing was planted at that time?

GM: I don't even recall that. My father never said too much. I don't know if this story attaches to what we're talking about, but...

KL: That's okay, we might come back to it.

GM: My father's two hobbies were shotguns and cameras. So immediately they put a restriction on all shotguns, that all firearms and cameras must be turned in to the authorities. Well, I'm just guessing, but my father must have had thirty or forty cameras, and likewise so many shotguns. And so he turned, this is my guess, that he turned maybe four or five in, and he woke me up one night, and he had a wheelbarrow full of cameras and shotguns and he asked me to go help him dig a hole. So we went to a corner of the field and we dug this huge hole where he dumped all the cameras and shotguns. And I remember this so well, I said, "Why are you throwing all of these away?" And his answer was very short, he said, "I don't want to be caught with them." but those things I remember. But he never really talked about it except after the war ended and we went back to where we used to farm. I recall he turned around and he said, "Do you remember digging that hole where we buried the shotguns and cameras next to the shopping center?" And he said, "Can you imagine the look on the workers' faces when they excavated the land and all these shotguns and cameras came popping out of the ground?" But I remember him asking me that.

KL: Do you have a memory of whether you tried to kind of protect them? Was there a thought of trying to reclaim them potentially later?

GM: Reclaim what?

KL: The cameras?

GM: No, no. I think he was afraid more than anything, to even own that many. Although it was innocent, it was just a hobby with them. No, no interest in reclaiming any of that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.