<Begin Segment 7>

JK: Why don't we move into wartime? At that time, you were in high school when the war started?

MO: No, not quite. I guess it was the beginning, freshman.

JK: You would have been a freshman. When Pearl Harbor was bombed, when did you first find out about that?

MO: Oh, we were at a basketball place, Peninsula Park is where they used to have meets, and we heard it while we were there. So we had to rush home from the east side, take a streetcar and get home to the west side.

JK: And how were your parents --

MO: It was in the evening. Oh, they were panicked.

JK: And what kinds of things were they talking about or the family worried about?

MO: Well, we didn't know what to expect. We didn't know who was being picked up, but then we were told there were a lot of men that were picked up. And that was the only, whoever got picked up, the stories were running around, but nothing concrete to prepare or to tell anybody. It's that they were looking after, going to Japanese homes and arresting the fathers.

JK: So you heard that, and were you worried about your own dad?

MO: Yes, I was, but they never came by to pick him up.

JK: After things settled down, what was happening while you were, still didn't know what was going on?

MO: We had to think about where we were going to be evacuated to, 'cause that's what they told us, that we would all be evacuated immediately and put all the Japanese in one place, which we didn't know where yet.

JK: Okay, and so you were, how was your family preparing for that? With the business and with personal things?

MO: I was too young for that. I didn't pay much attention. I think my older brothers helped that out.

JK: Okay. And because you owned, your father owned, your family owned the hotel, were there people that could help run the business while you were gone?

MO: I don't know the details of those things.

JK: Okay. And what kinds of things were you thinking of packing when you heard you had to pack?

MO: We could only take what we can carry. The younger you are, the less you could carry, so you had to be very careful what you're going to pack, not toys or cosmetics or anything like that that's useless afterwards.

JK: So you had to think out your, the clothes that you could carry.

MO: Oh, yeah, clothing that you want to take with you.

JK: And where, your family was able to store their other things?

MO: Yes, we did. We were fortunate because my father had bought the hotel. He owned the hotel which was very rare at that time, for anybody to own a piece of land, and we were able to just store things in the basement of the hotel.

JK: And how did the people who lived in the hotel, the pensioners, react to what was happening to your family?

MO: They wanted to know where we were going to go, what was going to happen, yes, but they weren't mean to us or anything. I'm sure we lost a few people that wouldn't want to stay where the Japanese people owned it, but after we left, they wouldn't know that it was owned by Japanese or not.

JK: So other people could come in and rent.

MO: They could still rent, uh-huh. We had no trouble with that, luckily.

JK: Okay. Your hakujin friends, how did they react to what was happening to you, or were you able to take, have contact?

MO: I didn't feel any friction at all. I think they said they were sorry that we won't be there anymore at school. They didn't know what was going to happen, and we didn't know for sure what was going to happen either, but we knew we'd been, we had to prepare to pack and be ready to move anytime.

JK: Okay, so you felt supported by their...

MO: Yeah, they were... I don't want to say decent, but they didn't show any nasty things to say to us.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.