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HH: What was your father's occupation?

WW: He, at the time, became aware of what he was doing, and was the executive secretary of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce. Now, the Japanese Chamber of Commerce was the organization of Japanese businessmen in San Francisco, and that included all the people who had businesses, including the substantial group in town around Chinatown and Grant Avenue, merchants as well as the shopkeepers, the people of various occupations and professions like Father Herb, that's when I got to know him. And he was in that job through... I think through most of my life until maybe the early 1930s. And about that time, I think the Japanese government... oh, let me go back a bit and point out that what the Japanese Chamber of Commerce did was to act as an organization that took care of the problems of the businessmen insofar as they related to relationships within the city, and also the relationships where the, whatever the contacts they had in Japan. Like, for example, the Grant Avenue merchants did a lot of a lot of exporting from, importing from Japan. And I used to work with my father on that, and then a lot of firms in Japan that wanted to sell things in the United States used that office, my father's office as a means for introducing their products to the possibility of American interests. Now that last part of his job became important in the early '30s as the Japanese government decided that they would make a more substantial push to try to expand their exports from Japan. So they used him and his office as a central point for information and product information, essentially, act more and more as a conduit from Japanese companies to American companies to American companies. And I recall he made many trips back and forth from San Francisco to Tokyo or whatever, back in the days when your travel was by ship. I remember going down to say goodbye to him as the ships left. During the late '30s, the Japanese government decided to set up offices called the Foreign Trade Institutes. And the one in San Francisco was run by my father, so I suppose he transferred almost entirely, really entirely to becoming an employee of the Japanese Foreign Office. From the local business center executive to employee of the Foreign Office, and obviously that made him fairly prominent in the view of the FBI and other agencies in the government who were by then becoming very suspicious of Japanese activities and Japanese businesspeople. So that, in turn, led to the night of December 7th, or the afternoon of December 7th, when he was picked up immediately, together with a group of people. I don't know, was your father picked up then? And interned from that day, actually, he never did return home.

HH: You said that's the last time you saw him?

WW: I saw him a couple of times before we were evacuated, visited down wherever they were holding him. And before they sent him inland to Missoula, Montana, I believe, which is where the internment camp was. But after December 7th, I had no formal contact other than to shake hands or pass clothing over or whatever. And that was really the last time I ever saw him because he... I did not see him after the war. I got in touch with him finally after the war was over, but never did get to Japan. And he died, and shortly thereafter, my mother died, both in Japan. So the net result was, that that was it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.