On a peaceful Sunday morning, December 7, 1941, Henry, Sumi, and I were at choir rehearsal singing ourselves hoarse in preparation for the annual Christmas recital of Handel’s “Messiah.” Suddenly Chuck Mizuno, a young University of Washington student, burst into the chapel, gasping as if he had sprinted all the way up the stairs.

“Listen, everybody!” he shouted. “Japan just bombed Pearl Harbor . . . in Hawaii. It’s war!”

The terrible words hit like a blockbuster, paralyzing us. Then we smiled feebly at each other, hoping this was one of Chuck’s practical jokes. Miss Hara, our music director, rapped her baton impatiently on the music stand and chided him, “Now Chuck, fun’s fun, but we have work to do. Please take your place. You’re already half an hour late.”

But Chuck strode vehemently back to the door. “I mean it, folks, honest! I just heard the news over my car radio. Reporters are talking a blue streak. Come on down and hear it for yourselves.”

. . . I felt as if a fist had smashed my pleasant little existence, breaking it into jigsaw puzzle pieces. An old wound opened up again, and I found myself shrinking inwardly from my Japanese blood, the blood of an enemy. I knew instinctively that the fact that I was an American by birthright was not going to help me escape the consequences of this unhappy war.

One girl mumbled over and over again, “It can’t be, God, it can’t be!” Someone else was saying, “What a spot to be in! Do you think we’ll be considered Japanese or Americans?”

A boy replied quietly, “We’ll be Japs, same as always. But our parents are enemy aliens now, you know.”

A shocked silence followed.

Source: Monica Sone, Nisei Daughter (Boston: Little, Brown, 1953), 145–46.