Densho Digital Archive - Eddie Owada Interview (denshovh-oeddie-01-0012)

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AL: Were you home when the FBI came to take him?

EO: Oh yes, we were all home.

AL: When did that happen and what happened?

EO: February 7, 1942, two months after Pearl Harbor. We were sittin' around again in the kitchen. It was still winter, so not too much to do outside. And suddenly -- it was still morning -- knock on the door. Two men in dark suits were there. Dad answered the door and they said they were from the FBI. They were here to search our place, which meant the house, the land, the outbuildings, barns, shed, chicken coops, everything. And we didn't even think at that time about, oh, anything about search warrants. So we didn't even ask and they didn't even mention search warrants, or didn't even talk about it. They just simply said, "One of us will search your house," and the other one would search the outbuildings and the rest of the farm. And they were looking for that explosives that's on that one paper. But, the end of the day they didn't find anything. So, they said to me, "We're going to take your father with us." And there wasn't much I can do. So I said, "Yeah, okay, go ahead." And they took him. They didn't tell me when... where he was being taken. He was able to leave with us all the money he had, which was $1.43. So he left that and they took him and we didn't hear from him, from him for about a week. And when we first heard from him, I opened the envelope and a letter, spread it open, there were sections cut out of it. They had all been censored. What was deleted or cut out by the censors was any reference to where he was or where he was being taken. All that was cut out.

AL: Do you know where he was, though? Since then have you found out where they took him?

EO: Yeah, he was taken to Missoula, Montana. I don't know if he went to Bismarck first or not, I can't remember. He kept speaking about Bismarck as being one of the places where some of the Isseis were detained. But he ended up in Missoula, Montana.

AL: And how did you find out he was in Missoula?

EO: He finally was, wrote to us, able to write to us. And the postmark said Missoula on it.

AL: And so you were then, you became the head of the family, right?

EO: Right. Yes, I was sixteen, a big kid then.

AL: What about your little brothers, how did they... were they scared? Were they upset?

EO: They didn't... they never told me. But I guess they were often wondering what was happening.

AL: Were you working at that time, besides on the farm?

EO: Yes, I had to in order to make a few dollars to support ourselves. 'Cause the $1.43 that Dad left, it wasn't going very far.

AL: What was your job?

EO: Well, what I did was I'd take a horse -- we had a good horse, good draft horse named Prince -- and I would take that and our plow, single plow that is one horse plow, and I would go around to all of our neighbors farms and contract plowing their berry field. We would just plow a furrow onto the bottom of the berry to keep the weeds down. And I did with several farmers around there.

AL: Were you still in school at that time?

EO: Yeah. The boys were still in school and I had dropped out so I can do all this.

AL: Did you have any experiences of other people treating you differently after Pearl Harbor, after your father was arrested?

EO: Oh, come to think of it, I would drive into Tacoma quite often to... not Tacoma, but Seattle. Tacoma maybe once during the entire period. But Seattle, two, three times, four times, and to just kind of pick things up. 'Cause I had learned by this time where various different things were. So that's what I did. Drive into Tacoma once, but Seattle more often.

AL: And did you have any interactions with people, hakujins or other people treating you differently because of Pearl Harbor?

EO: Oh, on the island we knew each other, almost everyone there in our neighborhood. And being that it was just a small neighborhood, war was not extreme yet, so it wasn't like L.A. where we had a lotta hostility. Everyone knew everyone. They knew we were safe.