Densho Digital Archive - Henry Fukuhara Interview (denshovh-fhenry-01-0004)

<Begin Segment 4>

JA: Tell me what you remember about December 7th, '41.

HF: Well December 7th, '41, my very, my very good friend, George Inagaki, he was best man at our wedding. We were out for a ride and, and here, here we had the radio on and then we hear this going on that Japan had bombed Pearl Harbor, and then immediately George Inagaki was president of the Japanese American Citizens League, so he, he immediately went home, we all, we all went home, and then George Inagaki went on to do whatever he had to do with the JACL and in, in helping out with the Japanese people that were having any difficulties. Because the FBI came almost immediately to pick up those people that they thought were subversive. So as far as that Sunday that we were out for a ride, that was... that was our day that we didn't do anything other than stay home.

JA: Did the FBI come to your house?

HF: No. We didn't -- no, we weren't bothered in any way. For those people, those families or -- it was only the males, the men that were picked up, and they picked them, they picked them up so quickly, you, you... it seemed like they were, those people were being watched from before the time of Pearl Harbor. I don't know whether they were or not, but it seemed that way because they were, they were picked up so quickly. Right after Pearl Harbor they were picked up and then we would say, "Oh, so-and-so, they came and picked him up, and so-and-so." And there were several men that were picked up in Santa Monica, and we find that those men that were picked up were at one time, when they were young, had served in the army in Japan, or, or they were, they had some connections with the Japanese government or something. But other than that, they were no, no different than anybody else that were not picked up, because my father -- of course he came... he came to the United States young and he'd never, he didn't serve in the, he didn't serve in the army. Maybe that's one of the reasons why he left Japan because he didn't want to serve in the, serve in that. Because they had to -- when they came to a certain age they had to serve I think like two years in the army. That was what they had to do. Maybe my father --

JA: After Pearl Harbor, did, did you find the attitudes of Caucasians change towards you?

HF: Oh, yes, yes.

JA: How did it change?

HF: It changed, it changed that those people that were very cordial to you in... they were very solicitous, as a matter of fact, when they were trying to sell merchandise to you. Now, there were a number of them that, after, after Pearl Harbor, they had nothing to do with you. They pretended like they didn't know you. So, that hurt our feelings because we had, we had done business with them for so many years, and we had, we had good relations with them But that's what, that's what happened. That's, in our case when we were, because we were in business, but I would assume that other people, other people in other business probably had the same experience.