<Begin Segment 12>

RP: So what did you do after graduation, Tak?

TM: Oh, my father decided the store wasn't doing too, too well. So he decided to go back fishing. So we moved back to fishing in nineteen... let's see, war broke out in '41, huh. Yeah, about nineteen... yeah, early part of '41 we went back to Terminal Island. That's when I graduated, winter of '41. Then we went back to Terminal Island. Then at Terminal Island I got this job at San Pedro working in a market, fruit stand. Yeah. I was working there and in fact I was working this one Sunday and that's when the war broke out. And I couldn't go home for three days because, see, went to work by a ferry, ferryboat. And if you went on a car you had to go roundabout way. And, and the bridge they had now, they didn't have that. See, they had that drawbridge.

RP: Drawbridge.

TM: Yeah. So I couldn't take the car to go to work. But when the war broke out, I was working for a Japanese family. So I went over to his house, slept there for three days.

RP: Do you remember the soldiers there at the ferry dock?

TM: Oh, yeah, yeah.

RP: They wouldn't let anybody --

TM: No.

RP: -- go back. Huh. What was your reactions to the, to the news when you heard Pearl Harbor was bombed?

TM: Oh, not any, not a real big thing it was just a surprising thing, huh. Yeah. I had no... because what happened politically or... it doesn't bother me too much. Like this election, some people would say, "God, we got a black president." Things like that don't bother me. I don't get too involved or think about -- not involved -- but think about things like that. What's, whatever is gonna be is gonna be. That's my attitude yeah.

RP: So you were finally able to get back on the island?

TM: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright (c) 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.