Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Sumi Saito Interview
Narrator: Sumi Saito
Interviewer: Alton Chung
Location: Ontario, Oregon
Date: December 4, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-ssumi-01-0004

<Begin Segment 4>

SS: But we moved back to Vale when I was in seventh grade, I think, and I graduated from Vale High School. But when I was a freshman in high school is when December 7th happened. And I remember going to school the next day, and Ines Wells, this girl that I went to school from first grade, she wasn't a particular friend of mine, but I knew her from first grade, choked my neck and says, "Simako, damn you, Simako." She choked my neck, and I said, "What did I do?" But she thought I was responsible for Pearl Harbor, I guess. So that was really a kind of eye-opener for me. I didn't really think I had anything to do with Pearl Harbor. What do you know when you're a freshman in high school in those days?

AC: Did you even know where Pearl Harbor was?

SS: Well, because of the news I knew, but the folks talked about what they heard on the radio or whatever. But we really didn't know that much. But I remember -- I don't know if I should even say it -- but we used to have that Tencho setsu, and they had a trunk that was full of the emperor's picture, the Japanese flag, and they always put it up and everybody did that banzai thing, you know. And we lived way out in the country so the higher ups in the Nikkeijinkai, I guess, thought maybe they could hide that stuff out on our farm. So I think that trunk is probably buried out there on our old farm somewhere. One of these days somebody's going to dig it up and say, "Oh my goodness, look at this." There's a picture of the emperor, the Japanese flag in there. But like I was saying, it wasn't anything subversive, it's just that they had loyalties to Japan because they were born in Japan and they were brought up that way, to revere the emperor. So we understood that, but I remember Dad and Mom worrying about where to hide it, and these guys, Mr. Sato, it might have been Paul's dad, and some other people in the community, Japanese community, came out and they were digging around, and I think they buried it somewhere, that trunk that had the flag in it. [Laughs] But I don't know. Do you know what happened to it, Paul?

AC: So your parents never went and dug it up after the war?

SS: Not that I know of. I don't know, they could have. You know, the kids don't know everything. They could have done something with it. But I kind of remember that.

AC: So how did you feel when you were singled out and choked by this person who you thought you kind of knew?

SS: Well, I thought, "What did I do?" I really thought that was unfair, because we were not brought up in a Japanese community where you learn Japanese and everything. And our hired men are all hakujins, and our neighbors were all hakujins. We used to run over to our neighbors and play, I found out just the kids that were sort of needy or unhappy or made fun of were the ones that teased us. There was another family on the bus, the DiWolf family, those kids were real mean to us. But they used to come to school with bare feet, and kids used to tease them, so I figured they felt like maybe, "There's somebody I can tease now." But that's the only thing I remember feeling at the time, that it's only those no-count ones who were teasing us. [Laughs]

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.