<Begin Segment 7>

LT: So after Executive Order 9066, you and your family knew that you would need to leave Fife. How did you make plans to leave, and what did you decide to take and leave?

KY: Well, we were only allowed two suitcases. We jammed everything we can in two suitcases, everybody did the same thing, that's all we took. Because a lot of our stuff we left behind, because it was left in the house.

LT: So what were personal items that you took, and what were personal items that you left?

KY: You know, your personal hygiene, toothbrushes, razors, soap, and change of clothes, shoes. Two suitcases is not very much. But when we went to camp, were able to order through Sears Roebuck or Montgomery Ward, so we bought clothes through them.

LT: Where there items that you left that you really would have wanted to have taken?

KY: No. Because clothes, it didn't make a difference to us because we knew we could buy more clothes there.

LT: How did you leave? How did you leave your home?

KY: We went in our trucks, and our neighbors drove us to camp, it was only three miles away, to Puyallup.

LT: And you were at the Puyallup Assembly Center.

KY: Yeah.

LT: Okay. What did you say to your classmates, your friends? You had developed such good relations with them.

KY: I said, "I'll be back. Guaranteed, I'll be back." And I was back.

LT: So can you tell us, you and your family had lived in Fife for all of your life. You were leaving your home, you didn't know when you would be coming back. What goes through your mind when you're leaving your home?

KY: You know, we were taught to obey the law. My father, that's one thing he taught us, to obey the law. And we personally thought that the government will do the right thing, so it didn't enter my mind, anything else. We were just following orders. But it turned out that it wasn't that way afterwards.

LT: So because it was a government order, you felt the government was appropriate.

KY: At first. But I thought afterwards, I said, "That was the wrong thing."

LT: Was it difficult to say goodbye to your classmates and friends?

KY: Oh, yes, it was real difficult.

LT: Can you remember what you said to them or what they said to you?

KY: All I can remember, I said, I told them, "Hey, I'll be back. If I'm able to come back, if I'm alive, I'll be back." And I was. This may be jumping the gun, but I went to, right after the war, I was still in my uniform, I went into a barber, it was full of people. I sat down, and he was cutting hair, he says, "I don't cut Japs' hair." So I said okay, I just left. Went to the barber two blocks away. He didn't last one month later. No men would go to him because all those guys that were waiting, I knew them, so they didn't go back to him, so pretty soon there was no more business, so he had to leave. And I wasn't sorry that that happened. He did the wrong thing, so that was the end of that as far as I was concerned.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2014 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.