FBI Investigation “He was hauled away”

They came in and really fear struck. I remember my father wasn’t allowed to move around, but we were. And they started asking him questions, they tipped over the sofa, slashed the bottom with a knife to see if anything was hidden there. I remember they, the FBI men, even went to the back of the home and I thought, like a child will think, maybe they’re after my piggy bank. But he asked if it was mine and sure, it was mine, and he says, “You’re a citizen.” So he didn’t touch that. Then he went to my brother’s room and they came out with nothing. But my father was, I remember, caught with a lot of money. I really don’t even know whether it was 200 or 400 dollars in his pocket. In those days, to a child, it just seemed like an awful lot of money and, of course, they took that, put that in a bag. And he was hauled away.

Loss “My father wasn’t going to come back”

My mother would console us by saying, “Well it’s because dad is a community leader, he’ll be released.” And that’s the way the FBI told us that, “He’ll be released as soon as we take him in to the office and interrogate him.” But, of course, he didn’t come back. I think it was about a week later, we went to where they detained these Issei men and through the bars we visited with my father for a short time. We never saw him but that one time, a week later, after he was picked up, ’cause he was sent to Montana, Missoula, Montana. Well, we corresponded, but I remember all our letters were censored with the holes either cut out or blacked out. You could hardly make heads or tails out of the message, but nevertheless, it was his handwriting. So there was a period when we just kind of gave up, thinking, my father wasn’t going to come back.

Never Again “It was such a waste”

It was such a waste. We talk about the economy, or the money, the government money, how much this must have cost to intern 120,000 Japanese Americans and the pain that it left each and every one of the families. I doubt if anybody could say what we gained. But it was very disrupting. And for my family, sixty years later, it hurts me to think what my father had to go through. He worked so hard and helped the community, but he lost everything.