Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community

Media
    BIJAC > Artworks > Oral History > FBI inspects Omoto home – Sada Omoto (OH0093)

FBI inspects Omoto home – Sada Omoto (OH0093)

Transcript

On that day when the roundup occurred, I was going to the University of Washington, so I was commuting. I wasn’t home, but my brother was. I have to admire the FBI in a strange sort of way. They apparently swooped down and hit every single family so that we couldn’t communicate with one another if we had the ability to do that. I can remember, and I still have, one of the documents that the FBI left with my family.

They took a, what used to be one of the do–it–yourself radio kits. Allied Radio Company would make these, send these kits out and so forth. The FBI said this is contraband. You… so they took that. It was not even half way completed. It happened to be my oldest brother’s hobby that he was doing this. That’s all the FBI did with our family. Because my dad had died, so that there was no adult male other than my older brother.

With

Video Interview — June, 2008

About the narrator

Sada Omoto

Sada was 19 years old at the time of evacuation. At that time, he had three brothers: Setsuo (27), Masakatsu (21), Taketo (24). When the US entered the war, Sada was a student at the University of Washington. He evacuated with his mother and brother Taketo. Sets and Mas, or "Bear," were serving in the military. Daikichi Omoto, Sada's father, passed away in 1931. Sada also had a sister, Kanee, who passed away in 1932. All four of the Omoto boys served in the army during WWII. Sada is a retired professor of Art History from the Michigan State University.