Densho Digital Archive - Henry Nishi Interview I (denshovh-nhenry

<Begin Segment 23>

KP: Can I ask a question here? I want to backtrack a little bit.

HN: Yeah.

KP: Back to the morning of December 7, 1941.

HN: Yeah.

KP: Where were you when you heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor and what was your parents' response? I mean, did your father have any inkling that he was gonna be arrested?

HN: No. No, none whatsoever. We were home and that night, I don't know whatever, whatever reason why, we went to the movies. And we came back and then that's when, when the, when the agents came and said, "We have to take your dad."

KP: Did you suspect trouble when you heard of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, or, I mean, what was your response?

HN: Yeah, well, I mean it, it was, it was really shocking, actually, that something like that happened. It was scary.

RP: Were you, were you down here at that time?

HN: In our home in, in West L.A. on...

RP: Okay. Had you left Davis?

HN: Yeah. I, we came home and...

RP: Right.

HN: And, because we didn't want to be, stay in school. But it was, 'cause we didn't know what was going, gonna happen, what's going on. So we, we left school.

[Interruption]

RP: So the war interrupted your education.

HN: Yeah.

RP: But you were able to get three years of school in?

HN: Yeah.

RP: You never got a chance to go back and graduate.

HN: I didn't, I didn't do that ever.

RP: Besides the fact that your father was picked up, other than the fact that your father was picked up, did the FBI agents also search your house?

HN: I don't think so. I don't remember if they did or not. I don't think so. I don't remember that. No, they didn't, I'm sure they didn't. I mean like, actually do that. They, it wasn't like, I don't think it was like they were coming after some criminal. They just had to pick him up and that's what they did. They were very polite about the whole thing. There was nothing that was really, real messy or anything like that. No, they didn't make a search.