Densho Digital Archive - Ayako Tsurutani Interview (denshovh-tayako-01-0006)

<Begin Segment 6>

RP: What do you recall about December 7, 1941, the day that Pearl Harbor was bombed?

AT: Oh, I was in the house listening to the radio and that's when I heard it. So I went up and next door to my in-laws and told them about. 'Course, they didn't believe it. And then my husband was out playing golf and he said they all left. It was such a shock. But when he used to write to me when he was in Japan, he said the way things looked he thought we'd be seeing another war. Of course he didn't think of Japan, but what he was hearing and reading about Germany, I think that... 'cause this was in 1935. So he sensed it, you know, that there would be another war.

RP: Do you recall the Depression years, the '30s?

AT: Yes, uh-huh.

RP: And did that impact your, your husband's business?

AT: It sure did. Yeah, he told me we'd starve for two years. I think if the war didn't come we might have been starving even longer. [Laughs]

RP: Did he take other work during those years?

AT: No, he did not. But it was only... he started in '35, no, that's when he came back from Japan. So it must have been '36 or something. I worked for a little while after, but the business went broke so... and then I was pregnant with Bruce.

RP: Do you remember after Pearl Harbor, the roundup of many Issei community leaders, priests and language people? The FBI coming and taking people away?

AT: Well, I heard that, you know, that a lot of people were worried. They told us to get rid of everything that's written in Japanese or even pictures. My mother had a big picture that my father had taken of the prince in the Golden Gate Park. And that was, she gave it to the consulate right away. And there were many others, but I think when she had to get out of, out of the house, she had to get rid of them or store them, store them at the church I think. And I think they were, they were broken into and a lot of the things were gone.

RP: Was your mother still in San Francisco?

AT: Yes, uh-huh. Because my two sisters and my brother weren't married at that time.

RP: So do you remember any, how life changed for you after the war started?

AT: No, not really. We still went to visit my sisters, although we were, had a curfew. I think they said it was eight o'clock. It might have been nine, but I can remember it as eight. And then when we had to pack, there were the blackouts, and so we had a hard time packing 'cause we couldn't see what we were doing.