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RP: Can you discuss a little the circumstances surrounding your father's firing from the railroad, and what were the long-, the short- and long-term implications on the family?

FS: Okay. My father's boss was Herbert Covington, and he was an assemblyman -- Tex Covington was his nickname -- assemblyman for the State of Nevada. When my father was ordered to be fired, he went to the governor, Carville, of Nevada, and asked him, "Please, do not fire this man. He has five children and a wife to support, and I will personally pledge the safety with him on the job. And the governor says, "It's out of my hands, it's a presidential order." And I don't know what he meant by "presidential order," but this is why Michi Weglyn suggested that I look for the paperwork on this. And I went to the museum, the library, in Carson. I think we made three or four trips there to look for different papers, and we couldn't find it. And during that time, somebody suggested I go to the museum, which I knew wouldn't have the papers. But they told me to go to the UNR and look for the papers, and that's where we found Andy Russell's thesis that had the paperwork that we needed.

RP: Based on that research, how did the FBI influence the railroads in terms of firing employees like your father?

FS: Okay. During the research, I was looking at all the newspapers during the era of 1941 through 1944. There were FBI agents all over Nevada. In fact, there were FBI schools at the time. Our house was raided by the FBI without a search permit, and I asked ORA if this was an infringement of my civil liberties. And they said no, because under the alien land law -- under the Alien Act, they could do this, 'cause it was my father's house. And, of course, they didn't find anything because we had to surrender all the hunting rifles, binoculars, and cameras and this type of thing to the government. I remember my dad did keep the shortwave radio, and every night he would plug it in because he did not read English. He couldn't get the Japanese vernaculars anymore, and the only way you could hear the news was to listen to the shortwave radio. So every night, he would hook it up and then he'd take it out and hide it. And then plug in the next day into the radio. We were allowed to keep our radio, but not the shortwave. But he had removed it when the FBI had come.

KP: Quick question there. He was listening to the broadcasts from Japan at that time?

FS: Yes, the shortwave radio. And this is the only way they could hear the news. Because they didn't understand English when it was on the radio, and they couldn't read the papers. So the shortwave was the only way they could keep up with the news. It was illegal, but he did do it. [Laughs]

RP: An act of resistance.

FS: Another thing, we weren't allowed to be on railroad property. We couldn't cross the railroad tracks. But in order to go shopping in Reno in the department stores, we had to cross the railroad tracks. And I guess they allowed that at the time, because it was on the other side of town. But as far as visiting, when we had the curfew, my parents could no longer visit friends in the evening. My sisters and brothers were not allowed to go to the football games, basketball games, or dances in the evening because of the curfew.

RP: How did the curfew affect their work? You said that your brother worked at night. How did you get around some of those restrictions?

FS: He would take the back roads to work. Because if he was caught, he could be jailed for breaking the curfew. My sister worked in the arcade in Reno because the dealers would come in and have their hair done, and she would work 'til midnight. The taxi driver would pick her up in the alley, she would sit on the floor of the car in the backseat of the taxi, he would drive her home, drop her off, and leave through the alley. And this is a ritual he did every night for her. And otherwise, she was breaking curfew, it was illegal also. But it (was) support, and it was a thing we had to do.

RP: It's an amazing story. We're not talking about the West Coast, we're talking about Reno, which was very close to the exclusion area. What was the impact on your father as far as his spirit, his independent will?

FS: It had a great psychological effect. In fact, he contemplated suicide at one point, and he wanted to take me and himself into the mountains, kill me, and commit suicide. Because we were the two mouths to feed that could not contribute to the family. And, of course, my parents, my mother and my sisters and brothers talked him out of this, but he went through a very, very low self esteem and suicidal tendencies, right. It was a blow, because he was the breadwinner, and all of a sudden, my mother was working for the Italian farmers pulling weeds in the onion field. And my brother and sister were working to help support the family. My mother was raising chickens to sell the eggs, and my brother was raising the rabbits to sell to the butcher store. And, of course, when the chickens got too old to lay eggs, we had 'em for dinner. We didn't, we couldn't go fishing or hunting, and that was a big support of our family before. And it was very, very hard. We did have our property, we had to pay the taxes, there was very little money coming in. So we asked to be interned in the camps, and they refused us because we were not on the West Coast. Which I think is saying something. [Laughs] Everybody else was interned, my aunt and uncle were interned in Tule Lake. We did make a visit there because my uncle was ill. My dad sent my two brothers, my sister and I, and my mother to visit them. And we had to get a permit to travel to Tule Lake. I remember being pulled over by a police officer, we had to show our paperwork. When we were leaving Tule Lake, my uncle looked at the car and said, "Those tires are not going to make it back to Reno." And my mother says, "Well, what do we do?" because the tires were being rationed during the war, and they didn't have money to buy tires. So he says, "Well, go to sleep and don't worry about it." So when we woke up in the morning and we were ready to leave camp, we had four different tires on our car. But we were not allowed to ask where we got the tires. We just left. And I'm sure it must have come from a military jeep or something, because the Japanese did not own cars in camp.

RP: Right. And you were allowed to travel without escort to Tule Lake? You mentioned that you were pulled over that one time.

FS: Right.

RP: You drove by yourself to Tule Lake?

FS: To Tule Lake, right. Now, I know a lot of people who were leaving California and traveling through Nevada to get to a different destination, were pulled over by the police, investigated, and escorted to the city limits to make sure they left our community.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.