<Begin Segment 10>

MR: With your father gone, how did you manage the greenhouses?

YH: Well, that was the hard part. We did what we could, but my sisters would go to market with what was in there. And then they kept, when it would get towards spring, they kept transplanting, making plants to go to market, 'cause that was our livelihood.

And that happened, and then we had to move. Word came out that we had to move, and that was just every night, all day, that's all we talked. "Well, they won't take us, we're citizens. Maybe Mom will have go to, 'cause she's not a citizen." But we didn't think... "we're citizens," that's all we kept saying, "they wouldn't take us." Then word gets around, and curfew and everything. We were in the dining room one time, we were standing by the heater, they had wall heat, and my sister screamed, she said, "There's a man at the window." And we all ran out of there, and to this day, we know it was a neighbor, 'cause he's the only one so tall that could look in. And he's just probably nosy. And because later on, after the war and when my dad died, he wanted to make a talk, and he wanted to tell everybody now nice he was. I guess they let him. Sort of interesting, because he sort of repented after, realized that there was no foundation for what he was looking at, or what he wanted to do. That night was just unreal. My sister, oldest sister went, then she went and slept with my mother. Came downstairs and slept in the bedroom with her, and she slept with her through the whole, until she got married. She took care of her.

Then we had to pack up the house, we had the big house. We stayed up all night packing, and put everything of value in this one corner bedroom and we locked it. We got back and it was broken into, and they had just destroyed everything in there, all my mother's vases and things she brought back from Japan, everything was just ruined. I don't know, I guess I just can't imagine that a mother or father would let their kids do that. Maybe they participated, I don't know. But they... that was just part of the, sad part of all this.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.