Shim recalls that she had on her best blue crepe chine dress that morning. “I wore the same dress for at least one or two days. I remember Mr. Yoshio told us to stay in the hallway because it was the safest part of the house. The only other part of the house we went into was the kitchen for food.”
When I asked her if Mr. Yoshio was interrogated by the F.B.I., she answered that he was not. She explained, “He was an engineer with the U.S. Engineers at the time.” And when I asked about the Ryusaki family, she said that as far as she knows, no one in her family was questioned.
However, within two days of the attack, the FBI did question and detain 370 Japanese, 98 Germans and 14 Italians. The original interrogation/detention center was at the Immigration Station at Fort Armstrong. In March of 1942, those internees were moved to the Sand Island Detention Center. It was the responsibility of the vice-consul to visit these detention centers, as well as those holding Japanese prisoners of war and to assure that they were meeting the stipulations of the Geneva Convention. But, Gustaf Olson’s role at Queen’s Hospital became all-consuming, and as a result, Shim’s role expanded. Soon Olson’s appearances at the consul were reduced to rushed visits when he reviewed Shim’s work and signed documents. It was she who became the de facto liaison between the Japanese civilian population and the military and was given full diplomatic courtesies. It was she who visited the detention centers and the prisoners of war.
The internment of the Japanese, the devastation of the attack, and the projected image of the Japanese in Allies propaganda unleashed latent distrust of the Japanese living in the territory. Shim recalls, “It was a difficult time… especially for the interned Japanese and their families… even their closest Japanese friends seemed to have completely forsaken them…They were stunned…wives of husbands who were interned were shunned to the point of women crossing the street just to not have to speak to them…Many women were left with businesses formerly operated by their husbands and they were suddenly forced to operate businesses themselves. Then there were other, less fortunate than these, who had no source of income to depend on and who were in destitute circumstances.”
It was often difficult for Shim to convince these women to accept aid from the United States government. “So I told them that if they were in Japan, the government would give them aid, and that helped them accept it.”
For others there was a fear attached to the aid. In Okaga Sama De there are stories of some Japanese women being afraid to accept government help, suspecting that the list of recipients could be used for internment or worse. “The Japanese…lived in fear during the early war days that they might be the next to be interned. Many had suitcases packed ready to leave home at a moment’s notice.2
Shim arranged for some of the wives of interned husbands to earn money. “I contacted an acquaintance of mine, Helen Suzuki who owned an Aloha Shirt company and asked if she would hire some of these women to do piecework at home. They did small jobs—just a straight seam, or attach a sleeve to the shirt…. Most of them didn’t know how to sew at first, so it would have been impossible for them to assemble an entire shirt.”
When I asked her about a typical day she said there were none. “Every day was different. I could be called to the waterfront, the Military Intelligence office, the Honouliuli internment camp or to someone’s home. But in some ways it was always the same. There was always so much crying on my shoulder. They would tell me, ‘My son is in the Army and my husband is interned. I don’t know what to do! I can’t even ask my friends because I cross the street rather than talk to them. It’s not safe. Someone might see and cast a doubt on them, too.’ How often I heard the same story. And I would end up crying, too.
“People were so afraid; the Japanese wouldn’t speak Japanese in public. I was riding the bus when a Japanese woman asked for directions in Japanese. She was an older woman. No one answered her—I spoke up. Everyone stared at me. It was such a fearful time that no one else had dared help her.
“It’s hard to imagine it now. Their fear made people destroyed what they held most dear—priceless scrolls, family pictures, even money—whatever would link them to Japan. They even changed their names to try to hide their identity. That sometimes made it hard for me to find people.”
