12/7/41 and 9/11/01 “We were going home from church”

When Pearl Harbor was bombed, on a Sunday, we were going home from church, and there’s just a bunch of young people in the car. We stopped at Curry’s Ice Cream Store to indulge. And someone came in saying that Pearl harbor was bombed. And our immediate reaction wasn’t “Gosh!” You know, something like that. We heard it, and we thought about it, and then we thought that was kind of a stupid thing the Japanese were doing, but it didn’t occur to us right away that this meant war. But, by the end of the day, it did come out, I think, didn’t Roosevelt speak either the end of the day or the next day? And his speech made sure that it was war, or we knew it was war.

Identity “We kinda grew up with it”

Well, the public pool in Pasadena down at Brookside Park was closed to ethnic minorities six days of the week and open only one day of the week. It was called, euphemistically, “international day,” and it was the day that the blacks, and the Latinos, and the Asians could swim. We didn’t say, “Gosh this is terrible, this is racial discrimination of the worst kind!” We just lived with it . . . because we kinda grew up with it you know.

Internment “Every family can tell you about losses”

Too many lives were affected. Too much property was lost. It was not good in any respect that way. Education for example, many people, their education was cut off. Kids in high school for example, went to camps and there was almost a jerry-built high school there. They used people who were in college, they used whoever they could recruit to come and teach in a god-forsaken place. So I think too many lives and too much opportunity and such were restricted, cut down, cut out. You might have bought a refrigerator, what are you going to do, you can’t take it with you. So it was a critical time. And I think every family can tell you about losses.