Densho Digital Archive - Tamiko Honda Interview (denshovh-htamiko-01-0012)

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RP: When did you learn of the... about an evacuation order for your...

TH: About in February, I think is when we finally found out about our possible future. Until then, my father thought perhaps he and my mother and my grandmother, because they were aliens, may be sent somewhere else, but he never thought his children, the citizens, would ever be incarcerated.

RP: So that was quite a shock.

TH: That was the shock, that was a shock.

RP: You were included.

TH: Yeah, so he felt sorry for us, but I felt sorry for my mother and father as well, that they had to go through this. We thought, well, we were young, we're strong, we can bear it somehow. But for my father and mother, after they worked so hard, I really felt sorry for them.

RP: How did your family prepare for the forced removal that came about?

TH: I don't know how they did it, but like everybody else, we could only take what we could carry. Fortunately, we were all healthy and we didn't have any special needs, so we were able to carry our, what we thought we needed, which included bedding, eating utensils, and of course, our clothing and any other things we needed that was essential. That I think what my mother and father did was very smart in that we had some late model cars, and I remember them saying, "Well, we need these cars when we get back, so let's store them." I thought, "Store them? What are they going to do?" Well, they took the tires off, drained all the oil out of the cars, motors. So when they came back and they restarted the cars again and went downtown shopping with car that's in good shape with good tires, the people downtown were jealous that we had such good tires on the cars.

RP: How did you, or how did your parents deal with the flower farm? How did they, how did they work out with that?

TH: What was that again, please?

RP: How did, what arrangements did you make to, for the flower farm?

TH: The flower business, most of our business was, the financial part of it was through the bank, local bank. And the local banker, who was very sympathetic to our cause, was very good about being very careful that all of our taxes were paid. And that people who leased the business and the land, would get paid. And so we are very secure knowing that we had a place to come back to.

RP: And that gentleman's name?

TH: Was, that gentleman's name was J-period-E-period Morrish. M-O-R-R-I-S-H.

RP: And he did this to not only your property but other family property?

TH: Yes, most of the flower growers.

RP: And roughly how many flower growers would there have been at the time that...

TH: You know, I'm not sure. Maybe thirty. I'm not sure.

RP: And who did you find to lease the property while you were...

TH: We had a flower shipper whom we did business with, a Chinese fellow named Harry Lee, and he agreed to, he needed the flowers for his business, too. So with his crew, he grew flowers. And when we returned, we had our business back.

RP: Now, another act that was taken after the war broke out was to freeze the assets of Isseis, I guess, assets that were in Japanese banks at the time.

TH: I'm sorry?

RP: The assets of the Issei were frozen?

TH: Yes.

RP: In the Japanese banks?

TH: Yes.

RP: But eventually they were unfrozen.

TH: Yes. I don't know exactly where my father, if he had funds in the Japanese bank, but the local bank, J.E. Morrish First National Bank, of which he was their representative, was able to help us out again and restart the business.

RP: Mr. Morrish was quite a story. What do you think motivated him to take an action like that?

TH: I don't know, but I would say he was a humanitarian. We owe him. And the community, the flower grower community rewarded him and his wife with a trip to Japan. And several years ago we had a big celebration using the church facilities to honor him and his family. He was gone by then, but his family. But a lot of the flower growers came to pay their respects.