Densho Digital Archive - George Hara Interview (denshovh-hgeorge

<Begin Segment 25>

LD: How about when you were in high school, you spoke of being at the top of self-confidence, a feeling that everything was going so well because of your status that you would had achieved in high school. Then because of the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a curfew imposed. How did you react to the curfew?

GH: I remember the one incidence is at the Hi-Y Club that I mentioned threw a farewell banquet, and they held it at Bohemian Restaurant which was a high-class restaurant right near Broadway and Washington, I think, and all the members and the advisers attended that and they all wrote little notes for me, and one of the fellows had borrowed his dad's convertible. And after the banquet was over, we're, I was the guest of honor, riding in the back of the convertible. And it was getting dark and the curfew time , you know, I forgot what time, but anyway, I left. I'm going to be out past curfew. I'm going to get picked up. Fortunately, I enjoyed the ride and never did get picked up. But you know, the curfew was imposed, and I was sort, we no longer went out in the streets after dark and played our usual games and things.

[Interruption]

LD: Did it make you angry at all having to be in on curfew?

GH: I don't remember having any particular resentment feeling about that. I have a theory, you know, I might have mentioned it, obedience, obedience to authorities in charge, school, police, this was instilled as, the Boy Scouts instilled in this. And so we got the notice, this was from the President of the United States, and that's why I think the Nisei leaders, the JACL decided to cooperate was the best. I think the Niseis weren't used to confronting authority or people in authority about injustices. I think they had faced that they were going to be treated well, you know, and fairly, and this evacuation thing was totally, totally something that they were unprepared for mentally to combat, and they felt that the best way to handle it was go peacefully, and that's why like very gentle lambs, we walked right through those gates and went into our stalls. But I think this was the brought up from the, during from the Isseis through the Niseis, founded, you know, reinforced all the time.