And so on that Sunday, he had met – he was meeting his Senryu kai at a...Maneki I think, restaurant in Little Tokyo, and so when the FBI agents came, I think it was very early in the morning – was Pearl Harbor, right? – and they – it was only a few hours after, they came to – there were three agents – and they came to ask my dad, and we said, “He’s not here. He’s in Little Tokyo.”
And so two agents came into the house and one of the agents, I remember, had...says, “Okay, you guys.” And he had this gun in his hand. “You sit over there,” and my brother – two my brother – Tosh and Joe and I had all gone to the door to see who was there. And my mother was still at church, so it was the three of us just there, and my older brother, Mike, was – was ill. And he had contracted tuberculosis in Japan when he went a year prior to that. So he was in bed upstairs, and so they said, “Is there anybody else in the house?” and we said, “Yes,” you know, “We – my brother is upstairs.” And they said, “Well, go and get him,” and so it was – Joe was nine, jumped up, and he was gonna go up the stairs, and he said, “No, sit there. Call him.” And so we called Mike, and he came down in his bathrobe, and joined us, and so the four of us were kind of scrunched up together on the – on the couch.
And the – one of the agent sat on this ottoman in front of us with his gun – I don’t know what he thought we were going to do.
Date: August 7, 2018
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Sharon Yamato
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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