Densho Digital Archive - Ko Nishimura Interview (denshovh-nko-01-0006)

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KL: Do you have questions about prewar stuff involving any of this older generation? Is there anything else that you think is important to add about either of your parents or about Shimpei from before the war, stories you heard or things that...

KN: Well, I could tell you that when Pearl Harbor happened, gee, it must have been about noon. Pearl Harbor was early in the morning for us on the West Coast. I answered a knock at the door, at least two -- they look huge to me -- gentlemen wearing overcoats, called me by my first name, and said they'd like to talk to my grandfather Sueji. So I got him, he briefly spoke to them and went in and spoke to my grandmother. We didn't see him, we never saw him until we saw him at Manzanar in late 1944. Of course, they arrested him, that was the FBI. I guess we were under surveillance for a long time. The only reason I know is my grandfather had a gift of a sword, military sword, and my grandmother didn't like it. So he told him to go bury it someplace, and he buried it in the nursery, actually. Four guys walk on the backyard with four shovels and the sword. So we were under surveillance a long time.

KL: The FBI dug up the sword?

KN: Yep.

KL: When they came to take him?

KN: Yeah. Of course, they never did anything. I could tell you another amusing story about that, before the war. Other people used to tell me this. Apparently his high school classmates, a couple of them, were admirals in the Japanese navy. They used to dock their cruisers in Long Beach, they used to lower their touring cars and come up to Pasadena and park it on Fair Oaks Avenue, it's the main drive. And there would be a marine guard standing, Japanese (marine) guard. (...) And somebody had a picture of it, and when my grandfather got arrested, they accused him of being a spy, and he said, "Don't be ridiculous. If I was spying on you, why would they park it on the front of the main street?" The guy comes in his uniform, there's a marine guard standing out there. And they quizzed him and then they found out that they were his high school classmates. So that was an interesting story, that's all.

KL: Yeah. He sounds pretty... I don't know what the right word is, confident to respond that way.

KN: Well, he says, "I'm just telling the truth." My grandfather was pretty straightforward, he says, "Why should anybody be afraid of the truth?" So just tell them the truth. He said, "Yes, they were here, and that car was in front of my house, obviously got a picture. And they were here because they're my friends." They went back and checked up, they were his classmates.

KL: Yeah. Well, and he's the person that you said was here by choice in many phases, came by choice and then chose to remain in the...

KN: And so it was an interesting... Grandfather Nishimura was a pretty big hearted guy, in other words, he didn't fear anything, it seems like he was just an ordinary guy. He was... maybe a Westerner kind of a thing.

KL: Yeah. You mentioned that likely the FBI had been watching him for a while.

KN: They must have been.

KL: Did anyone in your family or did he ever say why he thinks he was targeted?

KN: Well, obviously, the hysteria, why would an admiral stop by to see a nurseryman? They didn't do their homework that's all.

KL: Yeah. So he assumed it was those connections with Japanese --

KN: Yeah, he got... with war hysteria, they get paranoid, they think, oh, he got planted over here. Because I talked to my grandfather about that. He said, "No, I came over here, and they just happened to be my friends. It's the honest truth," he says.

KL: Right.

KN: "I can't tell them not to come." And so that's that story. But what was really funny was during the Second World War, we're in camp, we didn't know where my grandfather was. So my grandfather used to write letters to me. And you could tell, I should have saved those letters, but it's all cut out because it's censored. Of course, the letters I write, I didn't write, my uncle wrote 'em. And he wrote 'em in such a way that he was coding it, so he was trying to figure out, so my grandfather could answer where he was. And they cut a lot of it out, and after a while, my uncle Seth read one letter, I mean, it's full of holes, okay, you could hardly read it, it almost falls apart. He said, "I think Grandpa's in Missoula, Montana, in the federal prison," and that's where he was. We knew when he went to Santa Fe, New Mexico, he was able to tell me, oh, he went to Santa Fe. Because war has sort of wound down. But at the beginning, he was in the federal pen up in Missoula.

KL: So it was Shimpei who would write the letters on your behalf?

KN: Yeah, but I'm writing okay. He'll tell me what to write. So it would take about four pages to write the big words. I barely could write because I was just a kid. So I remember that, I did that in camp. And the only reason was the family wanted to know where he was. First of all, they wanted to know if he was alive, and they realized he was alive because they could see his handwriting.

KL: Back to his arrest, do you remember his demeanor when the agents came to the house and when he was taken away? How did he act?

KN: Well, I talked... he just went back and talked to my grandma, then briskly sort of patted me on the head and left.

KL: Uh-huh. What about them? Were they respectful, were they rude, were they quiet?

KN: I don't remember them being rude, there was no reason to. They didn't manhandle it or anything, they let him go back to... they didn't come in the house actually, so they waited for him there. They tried to escape out the back, they had five guys back there. Then he came back out and said goodbye, and I was the last person he talked to.

KL: Had he been monitoring the relationship between the U.S. and Japan? Did he have a concern about where the two countries were headed in regard to each other?

KN: Well, he didn't tell me this until after the war, but he said to me, "Japan had the largest merchant marine fleet in the world before the war, and they were not allowed to refuel in U.S. ports. And that's really as an act of war. That's what he said, and basically that's what his friend told him.

KL: His friends in the navy?

KN: Navy. He said, "That doesn't seem fair, that's not very friendly," he says. So that part I got out of him.

KL: Did he have a bag packed or was he ready to... did he have any preparations, do you think he had a concern for his security?

KN: No, he didn't take anything, he just put on his overcoat, his hat, and left. That's all he had. He didn't take another piece of clothing.

KL: How did your mother or your grandmother react to his arrest?

KN: Well, you know, to me, he acted calmly, but I'm sure they were pretty concerned, they never showed it. My grandmother never showed it. Never said, "Oh, don't worry about it," they didn't mention it. Not a word was mentioned, actually.