Densho Digital Archive - George Iseri Interview (denshovh-igeorge

<Begin Segment 15>

AC: Well, I'd like to go back to when, you know, to where were you and how did you learn about Pearl Harbor?

GI: Oh, okay. I remember that very, very clearly. Pearl Harbor, my story on that goes back to about 1938 I think it was. A fellow named Williams, I forgot his first name, but I remember the kind of car he had. He had a Hudson Terraplane, and he had a flat tire, so he called and wanted us, it was Jack Williams, called us to come and fix his flat tire for him, put a spare on or whatever. There's about three or four blocks away. I went there. And before I went there, I was listening on the radio to the Orson Welles presentation. I don't know what the title to it was, but it was a story about invasion of the United States from outer space.

AC: War of the Worlds.

GI: Okay. And on that broadcast, I listened, intently because I said, "Boy, this can't be true and it will be proven when we get the, every fifteen minute station break," see. No break came at least I didn't hear one, didn't hear one for the whole program. And I don't know who they referred that there was a station break or not, but I didn't hear one. And when I was fixing that, working on the guy's tire, I kept looking up, like this. I wondered if the invasion going to come to where I was and got down and then found out when the program was over that it was a false, just a presentation of a program. I was relieved, but boy, that was realistic, you see. Well, about December, that was December the 7th. My wife and I was married November the 5th, so we went on our honeymoon to Southern California, and I had a '41 Chevrolet. About that day, I was just getting back to greasing and lubricating the car and changing oil and checking it all up, and I headed up on our service station hoist, had the radio on full blast, no. I didn't have the radio on yet. A neighbor, fellow named Earl Harden, and he's still living yet, good friend of ours and been a lifelong neighbor, and he says, "George," he says, he was just white, you know. "George," he says, "Japan attacked Pearl Harbor and the Philippines." I said, "What do you mean?" "Yeah, they bombed Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, and the Philippines." I don't think I ever heard of Pearl Harbor before but I found out. And I said, "Oh, Earl." I says, "That's another one of program like Orson Welles program." "No, George, turn your radio on." I turned the radio on, and oh, my god. It just shattered me. I didn't know what to think, what the hell? You know, it can't be, but it's on the news. And it wasn't long before army trucks start going by our place which is the main Valley Highway going back and forth from Tacoma to Seattle. And all that realize well, it must be true.

And that evening, an army truck stopped across the street and I thought, oh boy, bunch of servicemen coming running over to the gas station. They just came over to buy some pop or something, you know. And I kept thinking one of the guys could see that we were, what's the word? The service station work, really nervous, you know. And one guy said, "Hey, don't worry you guys. We're not here to cause any trouble or anything like that. We just wanted this or whatever. In the first place, it isn't you guys in Japan had caused the war. It's the goddamn Englishmen," he said. I never really understood what he meant by that unless he was going back to the Revolutionary War. But politically, there must have been something going on, that he admitted. I didn't really find out what it was for. The barrage balloons, they started putting them up, and what they were for I guess is to detract bombs or aircrafts or anything they could do. They started putting up tents, and the servicemen, they were coming in and living in the tents, you know. And they never bothered us a bit.

About the time that they put the curfew on, they said, okay, we can't leave our homes from 8 o'clock in the morning, 8 o'clock in the evening to 6 o'clock in the morning. Well, we had the service station here, and my, one of my employees is Art Imanishi. He lives here. I think we lived across the, we were in the old store I think in the bedroom back there in the old store building, and so we didn't worry too much about it. We went back and forth there, took chances there because they would be, after all, we're working here and we're going home to bed, you know. So sometimes we broke the curfew. But the surprising thing was is that we came to know some of the GIs, the MP's real well. They used to drop by the service station and visit with us and talk with us, this and that. During curfew, they say, "Hey, you guys want to go for a ride to town, see what's going on?" Yeah, sure. So they put us in their car and take us uptown, Kent and Auburn, and show us around. They were that good to us, and we never got caught or nobody gave us any trouble. We weren't causing them any trouble.