Densho Digital Archive - Clyde Tichenor Interview (denshovh-tclyde

<Begin Segment 4>

KL: Let me back up a little bit. I wanted to ask you what you remembered about the attack on Pearl Harbor and other places in the Pacific by Japan?

CT: I remember the announcement on a Sunday morning.

KL: Were you at home?

CT: Yes, and I remember getting on a bicycle and being excited, driving to one of my friends' house several miles away and talking about it with them, listening to the radio.

KL: Was it surprising?

CT: Surprising? [Laughs] Yeah, I guess that's an understatement.

KL: What were the streets like when you took your bicycle rides to your friends'?

CT: Relatively deserted. I mean, there were cars, but not many. People weren't rushing around or anything because of the... it was normal, I would say.

KL: Do you remember it causing changes, that attack, in the way people acted?

CT: Well, of course, at school, the President made an address. And it was a daytime address and they took, the whole school went out to the bleachers on the athletic field, and they amplified his address. So we all sat there and listened to the President talk about the attack and everything.

KL: He was a student, there was a student body president?

CT: No, I'm talking about the President of the United States.

KL: Oh, I see.

CT: Talking about the attack, he was on the air, special broadcast, and we were all out there listening to that.

KL: What did the students think? What was the conversation afterwards?

CT: Oh, they were contemptuous.

KL: Of the President?

CT: No, no, of the Japanese. And it was prejudice, which lasted for quite a number of years amongst Caucasian citizens.

KL: Were there Asian kids in your school?

CT: What about in school?

KL: Were there Asian kids in your school?

CT: Well, there certainly weren't after that. They moved them all out. Whatever Asians there were were Chinese, or some other race than Japanese.

KL: But before people were moved out, do you think there were some Japanese American kids in your school?

CT: Oh, yeah.

KL: Were you friends with any?

CT: I had no reason at that point to be associated with them until I got into the interest in judo. By that time they were in the segregation camp, Manzanar, and similar camps.

KL: I've heard some people talk about teachers or principals saying, "We need to look out for our classmates, I won't tolerate any bad behavior toward students. Do you remember any teachers or principals, administrators, talking about...

CT: No. Because in Chicago there were lots of prejudices among people. But in California it was much more easygoing. It was a tension, like in Chicago.

KL: Do you think the Japanese American students felt worried about their relationship with other students, or was it just not...

CT: I don't know, but I'm sure they did, because they were treated as aliens.

KL: Even in school by the other students?

CT: Yeah, yeah.

KL: Do you remember anything about the removal, about people leaving their homes or the students leaving school?

CT: No, no. They were segregated enough initially to where their moving out had no effect on us. And we always lived in apartments because with my father gone so early, my mother wasn't able, and my brother had to go to work part-time, too, because he was an usher in a movie theater, and he ended up managing the staff part of the movie theater. And that was what he was working at, and she was working as a waitress, and I was going to school.