<Begin Segment 4>

KL: Did you ever experience any negative treatment from people outside of the Japanese American community before the war?

JW: No, it was just after the war. No, I don't think I've ever experienced anybody calling me names or anything, but that happened after the war. I remember when... that was on the 7th of December, and that was on a Sunday, so the following day was a Monday. And my neighbor said, well, her dad said, "I don't have to school," and I said, "I don't feel like going either. And my dad, he says, "They're not fighting you, Teru" -- he called me Teru -- "so you go back." So we had to go to school, but it was hard.

KL: Why was it hard? Can you tell me what your...

JW: I had a history teacher, I'm not going to mention his name, he still might be alive. But I can tell by the way he... we weren't Japanese anymore, it was the "Japs," this type of thing. The Japanese on a whole then were, at my age, were kind of quiet. They never raised their hands when questions were asked. So this one teacher, she was really ridiculous. She would ask us questions and she'd look at these little Japanese people there, students, and she would say, "I know you know the answers, but no." This is what she said: "You little Jap kids, you don't raise your hands. I know you know the answers." She never said that before, she just took us for granted as being quiet. It wasn't fun, but we kept on going. That was okay.

KL: How did life... besides that teacher, how did life change for you in those months between the attack and having to go into Santa Anita?

JW: Well, frankly, I really don't remember too much about that, except we did have... you know, we had these farms, everybody had, their lands were loaded with vegetables ready to harvest. We weren't able to do that, we had to sell all that stuff. That was kind of hard, and I felt for my parents because they worked hard. Well, we did, too, I was seventeen. And then not being able to harvest then, get money for it. We poor, we were not rich at all.

KL: How did you dispose of... you said you had to sell things. What were the details of that?

JW: Well, the thing is, they would come, they knew we had to evacuate, but they'd come a couple weeks early and we'd say, "No, that's too cheap." But lo and behold, just about the day before, we had to sell things very cheaply. You know, like a washing machine for five dollars or something. I think that really hurt. It really hurt the parents.

KL: Did they have any outward signs of what they were feeling? Can you describe after the buyers left, how your parents responded?

JW: No, I remember several of the fathers in our little community there were taken because they were heads of this, heads of that. But basically... you know, I don't remember that much. I don't think my folks, they never mentioned too much, they never talked about how they were feeling.

KL: Did you worry that your parents would be taken?

JW: Pardon?

KL: Did you worry that your parents could be taken, or did they prepare for that?

JW: No. My parents, they were just farmers. Mr. Nishimura, they were heads of the various organizations, Japanese American committee of some type of thing. They were taken. But we had... one dumb thing I thought was just, I could just see that fire in front of our house. They said, "We got to get rid of all the Japanese books that we had." So Dad built a fire and he threw all our Japanese stuff there. It was just crazy. It was crazy.

KL: Can you tell me how it felt to have that fire and have to burn things?

JW: It was sad; it really was. I remember our brothers took judo, and they had these judogi. And even that went into the fire, and I thought that was... that didn't seem right. What did that have to do with anything? That was hectic.

KL: How did you get information about, like do you know how your folks decided to burn things? Was someone advising you or did you take a newspaper?

JW: I think it was advised in... I think it was advised from the newspaper. They had several newspapers that we subscribed to. I don't know. It's like, I don't know... it just didn't make sense, having to get rid of all that stuff, but they did.

KL: Do you recall how you learned that you would have to leave home?

JW: Oh, we were given notices and distributed to the homes.

KL: How did you react to that? I've heard some people say they didn't... I mean, how did you react to that?

JW: Oh, my god, it just seemed like, unreal. Did seem... "Where are we going?" You got evacuated, and some people evacuated on their own. By that I mean they had big trucks, they had more money, so they went to Utah, Idaho, but we just waited for more instructions, what to do. Yeah, these people left earlier than we did.

KL: Did your family consider leaving at all?

JW: No, that would have cost too much. We didn't have a big truck like these well-to-do people. Ours was just a little truck. No, I don't think we considered that.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.