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LAKSHMI SINGH: From NPR News in Washington, I'm Lakshmi Singh. Senate Democrats want the Justice Department to investigate whether the CIA tried to cover up the way it interrogates terrorism suspects. The New York Times first reported that the CIA destroyed videotapes of interrogations from 2002. Today, Senator Edward Kennedy said none of the lawmakers should have been kept in the dark.

EDWARD KENNEDY: Those tapes were not shown to Congress. They were not shown to any court. They were not shown to the bipartisan 9-11 Commission.

LAKSHMI SINGH: CIA Director Michael Hayden told agency employees this week that the tapes were destroyed two years ago for security reasons. Senate Republicans have blocked an energy bill, the House passed this week. The vote was 53 to 42 short of the 60 needed to force action on the measure. NPR's Brian Naylor has more.

BRIAN NAYLOR: The House passed measure would increase gas mileage standards for cars and trucks, repeal tax breaks for the oil and gas industry and require utilities to use some renewable fuels in power production. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell called it a partisan bill and noted that the Senate operates differently from the house.

MITCH MCCONNELL: And while she can muscle bills through the House on a party line vote, it doesn't work that way over here.

BRIAN NAYLOR: The she McConnell referred to being House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. The Senate is expected to strip some of the most contentious parts from the measure, including the repeal of the oil industry tax breaks and try again to pass a bill before the end of the year. Brian Naylor, NPR News, the Capitol.

LAKSHMI SINGH: Mission managers are considering their options to launch space shuttle Atlantis. Critical fuel sensors failed during yesterday's countdown. NASA decided to delay the launch until tomorrow at the earliest. Pat Duggins of Member Station WMFE reports.

PAT DUGGINS: NASA says the one thing it won't do is try to make extensive repairs to the two engine cutoff sensors. They're inside the external fuel tank and connected by wiring to the computer that controls the shuttle's main engines. If fuel runs low, the sensors trip and send a signal to shut the engines down. Two sensors failed yesterday. NASA's LeRoy Cain says engineers are working on a way for mission control to watch the sensors moment by moment during flight and to know which readings are true and which ones are false.

LEROY CAIN: That is, in fact, the question that we've asked them to answer and to put-- to dot the I's and cross the T's, and bring in that story. And then we'll evaluate that based on its merits.

PAT DUGGINS: If a true danger signal is detected under the proposal, the astronauts would be told to shut their engines down manually. For NPR News, I'm Pat Duggins in Orlando.

LAKSHMI SINGH: The economy created 94,000 jobs in November. Stuart Hoffman, the Chief Economist for PNC Financial Services Group, says the Labor Department's latest report does not suggest the economy is headed for a recession.

STUART HOFFMAN: It does tell us that at least so far in the first two months of this quarter, the economy and the labor markets are continuing to grow. And these are not signs of recession.

LAKSHMI SINGH: Right now, the dow is up 9 points at 13,629. This is NPR.

SPEAKER: Support for news comes from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, making grants to improve the health and health care of all Americans. On the web at rwjf.org.

STEPHEN CHAN: From Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Stephen Chan. The president of the Minneapolis-based Home Ownership Preservation Foundation says she's pleased steps are being taken to protect people from foreclosures. Colleen Hernandez was part of a group of people who advised President Bush and the Treasury Secretary about the issue. Yesterday, Bush unveiled a plan to freeze interest rates on some subprime mortgages for five years. Hernandez says the industry is already reforming the home mortgage process and eliminating some products.

COLLEEN HERNANDEZ: The low documentation, loans, and some of the higher risk exotic products that weren't a good match for the risk profile of the borrower. What we found were the least sophisticated borrowers were taking on the highest risk in most sophisticated loans.

STEPHEN CHAN: Hernandez says her organization's help line deals with thousands of calls a day from people seeking advice on how to keep their homes. Land has been acquired for a new state recreation area in Central Minnesota. The Greenleaf Lake State Recreation area officially was put on the map yesterday when the state acquired nearly 300 acres from a landowner South of Litchfield.

The Department of Natural Resources says winter is off to its snowiest start in Minnesota in more than a decade. According to a DNR snow depth map, a foot or more of snow covers most of Central and Northern Minnesota. Overall, the entire state has at least three inches of snow on the ground. The Twin Cities airport has received about 8 inches of snow, almost up to the 10 inches it gets on average for the entire month of December.

A DNR climatologist says the last time the state had such early and complete snow cover was in 1996. A snow emergency wraps up today in Saint Paul. Partly to mostly sunny day forecast. Scattered snow showers in the far Northeast. Highs 0 in the far North to the low 20s in far Southern Minnesota. 12 and sunny in the Twin Cities this hour. This is Minnesota Public Radio news.

GARY EICHTEN: All right. Thanks, Stephen. Six minutes past 12. And good afternoon. Welcome back to midday on Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Gary Eichten. Flags are flying at half staff at government buildings across the state today in memory of the Americans who died during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor 66 years ago, back on December 7th, 1941.

Governor Tim Pawlenty, in his proclamation for the day, notes that 84 Naval Reservists from the state of Minnesota were serving on active duty at Pearl Harbor on December 7th, 1941. In fact, they fired the first shot of the war, first defensive shot of the war sinking a Japanese submarine attempting to infiltrate harbor defenses prior to the air attack.

During this hour midday, we're going to profile two Minnesotans whose lives were dramatically changed on that day in dramatically different ways. Kenneth Deans was in the army on the Island of Oahu. He witnessed the attack on Pearl Harbor and the other US military bases on Oahu, including the one where he was stationed.

Meanwhile, Carl Nomura was a 19-year-old Japanese-American living in Los Angeles. Not long after the attack, Mr. Nomura and 120,000 other Japanese-Americans were rounded up and placed in camps. Minnesota Public Radio's Dan Olson spoke with both men, the latest installment in our Voices of Minnesota interview series.

DAN OLSON: Both Ken Deans and Carl Nomura are World War II military veterans. Both were in the army. After the war, both made Minnesota their home. Beyond that, the two have very different stories. First, Kenneth Deans. There were more than 90 US Navy vessels anchored at or near Pearl Harbor on the island of Oahu on December 7th, 1941. They included battleships, destroyers, submarines, tenders and minesweepers, among others.

Nearly 300 Japanese military aircraft attacked in waves just before 8:00 in the morning on that day for nearly three hours. US losses included 21 ships, sunk or damaged, 188 US aircraft were destroyed and dozens damaged, the majority hit before they had a chance to take off. American dead, including civilians, numbered just over 2,400, according to the Navy. Japanese losses included 29 planes, less than 10% of the attacking force.

Kenneth Deans saw the Japanese planes on their way to Pearl Harbor. Deans was a first Lieutenant in a US Army artillery unit. Deans and his wife, Mildred, were living in a house on Oahu a few miles away from Pearl Harbor. He was 29 years old. Ken Deans is now 95. He lives in Mahtomedi, the Twin Cities suburb near where he was born and raised. Deans mind is sharp, his memories vivid. Sitting in a big armchair in the living room of his home, Deans asks his daughter Nancy to retrieve some notes to aid his memory.

KENNETH DEANS: It's a refresher.

NANCY DEANS: 95 years, it's hard to keep track.

KENNETH DEANS: Thanks.

DAN OLSON: Deans joined the Army Reserve before World War II. His artillery training included a stint at a base in Wyoming, and the artillery equipment was not exactly state-of-the-art.

What was Wyoming like?

KENNETH DEANS: Wyoming was pretty wild. It was Cheyenne, Fort Warren, Wyoming, and that was horse drawn artillery. And we used 75 millimeter guns, French 75.

DAN OLSON: Ken Deans was sent to California for more training, and that's where he married his wife, Mildred. In 1941, Deans artillery unit was stationed at Schofield barracks, next to an air base on the island of Oahu.

Where were you on Sunday, December 7th, 1941?

KENNETH DEANS: I was asleep. And we were living in a beach house in Hawaii near this unit. At seven o'clock in the morning, I was asleep. And my wife was down on the beach. She came into the house then after we'd-- and woke me up and said, what are these planes doing? Hundreds of planes are coming flying over the house.

Well, in Hawaii, we didn't have 100. We had very, very few. So I told her-- well, I said, are they marked or anything? She said, yes, they have circles under the wings. I said, well, that's not our planes, because if it's a maneuver, we always use stripes and these are foreign planes of some kind. Well, we didn't know, had no clue.

DAN OLSON: There was no premonition of an attack?

KENNETH DEANS: Not at all. I went out then. It was 80 degrees, sun shining. It was beautiful. And I watched these planes, hundreds flying over the house. There were--

DAN OLSON: Wave after wave?

KENNETH DEANS: Wave after wave.

DAN OLSON: How low were they?

KENNETH DEANS: Treetop. Very, very-- in fact, one of the Japanese pilots waved at my wife when they flew over. She came back and told me, she said, well, they're waving at us. And this hadn't-- the bombs hadn't dropped yet. They were coming in.

DAN OLSON: And what was your reaction when you saw this? Did you know immediately what was going on?

KENNETH DEANS: No, we had no idea. Pretty soon, the ground began to shake. Where we were living, we were, from Pearl Harbor-- we were about 10, 15 miles from Pearl Harbor where we were living.

DAN OLSON: So even at that distance, you could already feel and probably hear what was going on.

KENNETH DEANS: Very definite. Yeah. And there was no warning, no nothing.

DAN OLSON: So what appeared on the horizon over in the direction of Pearl Harbor?

KENNETH DEANS: Fire and smoke. Then we said, well, that's an attack of some kind. If any crisis came up in the island, we were under instructions to stay tight. Just stay where you are. You will get instructions. Well, there were no instructions. Nothing happened. We had a telephone and radio. That's all. There was no-- we had no such thing as TV.

DAN OLSON: From those planes, as they were traveling over your house on Oahu early on that morning, it would have been-- for them flying 10, 15 miles, it would have been literally only a few seconds. There was no chance to even lift the phone and warn anyone.

KENNETH DEANS: No one. No. And then pretty soon, somebody-- my wife said, well, let's turn on the radio, see what's going on. So we did. We turned down the radio, and finally heard from the announcer in the lower tower, that was down on a dock in Hawaii, he said, we are being fired on. These are real bullets hitting the building. They were-- the announcer was in this tower.

And we said, well, we better do something. We have no instructions. So then pretty soon over the radio, they said, all military personnel returned to your base. Well, because the military personnel were all down in Honolulu, they were-- and we were at our home on the beach. And there were scattered all over the island.

Then finally, we got the message. And I think it was by some-- somebody had heard on their personal radio, because we didn't get anything by telephone, but somebody had heard, shut off all your electrical equipment and lock your house, and everybody go into the base, everybody. If you're married, take your family from your house into the base. And everybody report for duty.

DAN OLSON: So this is what you did, you just picked up and left?

KENNETH DEANS: Then we picked up and left. We locked the door. Then when we got into the base, they said-- I had my own car there. And they said, turn your keys over to the military police. They'll take care of your car. And your wife will go to one building and you go to your unit, your military unit, and get organized and get ready to move out.

DAN OLSON: 95-year-old Kenneth Deans. On December 7th, 1941, he was a 29-year-old Army Artillery Officer on the Island of Oahu when Japan's military launched its attack on nearby Pearl Harbor, the event that drew the United States into World War II. You're listening to Voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Dan Olson.

Japan's attack caught the United States by surprise. In 1939, the US had begun replacing World War I era equipment with newer and better gear. But in many cases, including for Kenneth Dean's artillery unit on Oahu, much of the equipment, even including the helmets, were World War I vintage. The attack caused chaos. As the hours then days passed, Ken Deans and others assumed Japan would follow the aerial attack with a land invasion. Here's more of our conversation.

So as you're seeing these planes, now you're separated from your wife, you're seeing already the damage and hearing the bombs drop, what's going through your head?

KENNETH DEANS: How long is this? What's next? We said, are they landing now or are they coming in? That was the real concern because-- and we didn't have even a baseball bat to defend ourself. Everything was peacetime. And all our-- these men were all assigned guns, but the guns were all locked up in the barracks and under double security.

DAN OLSON: So when people started understanding what the situation and what was happening here, what were your orders? What were you told to do?

KENNETH DEANS: Finally, we were told, get busy, get as much equipment as you can into the field. And that meant-- I had eight of these British 1918 guns, but I had only 125 men living in the island. So with-- and these men weren't-- all I had was probably 40 men that were-- on Sunday morning that were up and around. The rest of them were downtown.

So I took the 40 men, and I said, well, we got enough men to get four guns. We'll take the four guns out, get them out, take them out, so we can defend the beach. That was the one thing that we had to keep uppermost. We expected a landing. And that all this time they were strafing us. So we went ahead and got the trucks and got the guns hooked up and got them-- we were dressed like this because we didn't have uniforms on. And we had some of the men in sports shirts. I said, forget it. We got to go.

And they handed us-- we had old World War I helmets. They said, well, you got to have a helmet because you don't know if they're going to be strafing or not. We had to have helmets. So they handed them out as we got went out the door to get the guns and the trucks. And all this time, the ground was shaking and the bombs were being dropped and the planes were firing then. The Japanese planes were firing in all directions.

DAN OLSON: Schofield was not being attacked at this point.

KENNETH DEANS: Yes, it was being attacked by planes. They were strafing. And the few people that were in the plane or in the barracks sleeping got away, got out. And the barracks were concrete, very, very stable building. They woke up and they said, hey, get on the porch. Watch this. These planes are coming in at us. And they were flying down low to strafe the porches and they did. They strafed-- we lost one man on a porch. He got hit by the plane strafing. They were aiming to really cripple the air base.

In that air base, they had about 12 or 14 brand new P-40 planes. They were fighter, single fighters. They were all lined up. Because it was peacetime, they park them pretty nice and straight in a line. So on the planes, they just lowered down and strafed the planes, set them all on fire. So they were all burning. And some of them were brand new, still had paper on the windows. Some of them had ammunition in them. That was exploding. It was a mess. Absolute mess.

DAN OLSON: 95-year-old Mahtomedi resident Kenneth Deans. He was an army officer in charge of an artillery unit on the Island of Oahu when Japan launched its surprise attack on nearby Pearl Harbor on the morning of December 7th, 1941. Later this hour, we'll hear from Carl Nomura. He and tens of thousands of other Japanese-Americans were detained during World War II.

Not long after Pearl Harbor, Kenneth Deans and his unit were assigned to the South Pacific. And in true military fashion, no one was told where they were being sent. The only clue was they were issued wool uniforms. To Deans and others, that didn't make sense. Wool for the South Pacific?

Maybe, they guess, they were being assigned to Alaska's Aleutian islands, which were being invaded by Japanese military forces. As Deans and his unit embarked on a huge transport ship, they concluded the next clue as to where they were being sent, North or South. It would come in the morning when they could see the sun. Here's more of our conversation.

KENNETH DEANS: The sun was shining on our left, so we said, we're going South with wool uniforms. This doesn't make good sense. Well, after-- I don't remember. It was about, I think, four days, we landed at Australia and it was winter. We didn't realize that. We left in June and it was hot in Hawaii. And we landed in Australia in the middle of winter. Practically, there was snow on the sidewalks, not much. So we were glad we had the wool uniforms.

But then that didn't last long, because then after we left Australia-- at Australia, we got all brand new equipment. Well then we had to learn how to use it because we had never seen it. In the islands, you didn't see new equipment. It was the antique World War I. New trucks in Australia. They had already waiting for the whole division and new guns, everything. So we had to learn to use them. And from there on, that was what we used when we went island to island to island.

DAN OLSON: Kenneth Dean's island hopping with his artillery unit, included combat in New Guinea and the Philippines. After two years of active army duty overseas, Ken Deans was reassigned back to bases in the United States. World War II ended. Deans stayed with the military. He went to work for an army unit working on a new weapon, missiles. Deans worked with captured Nazi scientists, including Wernher Von Braun. Deans admits he's not gotten over his antipathy to his Japanese enemies. Here's more of our conversation.

Was there any odd feeling? Did you have an odd feeling that, look, we were just at war with these guys, trying to beat them, trying to kill him, and here we are, we're all working together now?

KENNETH DEANS: Personally, I hate to say it, my odd feeling was the oriental people. Just the German people, I enjoyed working with them. And when we were in Germany, they were excellent to talk to and accommodation. They were helpful. Very, very fine people. The oriental people were the cruelest. They were the ones that backed the Bataan March and the terrible atrocities, that we hear about in the war in the Pacific.

DAN OLSON: Was there any talk of the death camps in Germany and the concentration camps there?

KENNETH DEANS: No, never a word. No. I would say it was quiet, very quiet. They never brought it up. And it was just, I think, a feeling of sorrow that had happened. And it was directed by the wrong way.

DAN OLSON: 60 years later, I wonder if we have recovered from those feelings we have about different ethnic groups, the Japanese and the Germans from World War II. Do you think we've recovered from it?

KENNETH DEANS: I don't think I ever will. I'm sure some people will, because I've heard people say, you've got to go to Japan. I can't. I couldn't go to Japan. We had chance to see it. And I shouldn't feel that way. Now the Japanese people that are here are fine. I talk to them. We see them and maybe go places here. But I just can't thaw out. And I guess that's wrong.

DAN OLSON: Kenneth Deans, it's a pleasure to talk with you. Thank you so much for your time.

KENNETH DEANS: I'm glad to. Yeah.

DAN OLSON: Kenneth Deans retired after 29 years in the army with the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. The 95-year-old military veteran lives in Mahtomedi. You're listening to voices of Minnesota on Minnesota Public Radio. I'm Dan Olsen.

Carl Nomura is retired and lives in Washington State. Nomura lived in Minnesota with some stints elsewhere for more than 40 years. He returns often to visit family. I talked with him at his son's home in South Minneapolis. During World War II, Carl Nomura was admitted to the University of Minnesota at a time when many other institutions were denying admission to Japanese-Americans.

After the war, Nomura got his PhD in physics at the U. He went to work for then Minneapolis-based Honeywell helping design computer components, and he became a successful man. In 1984, Honeywell recognized Nomura as the company's best executive in its history. He helped manage the changeover of Honeywell products from vacuum tube to solid state electronics.

Then in 1988, Nomura won the highest award given by the University of Minnesota, the Distinguished Graduate Outstanding Achievement Award. However, 85-year-old Carl Nomura starred in life is in sharp contrast to his later achievements. His parents, both born in Japan, came to this country to work on the railroad, including a stint in Montana.

CARL NOMURA: I was born in somewhere between Deer Lodge and Three Forks, Montana.

DAN OLSON: Why can't you be more specific? Somewhere, was this in--

CARL NOMURA: I was born in a boxcar. My father was a laborer on the Great Northern, laying the tracks.

DAN OLSON: Why a boxcar?

CARL NOMURA: We had to move every day. As the tracks laid, the boxcars move forward.

DAN OLSON: The boxcar was your home?

CARL NOMURA: That's our home. These were boxcars that were fashioned with bunks. And there are about 60 men living with us. And my mother was a gang cook.

DAN OLSON: How long did you live in the boxcar in Montana?

CARL NOMURA: Five years. We left Montana in 1927 when I was five.

DAN OLSON: I'm still focused on the boxcar. Five years there. The boxcar goes out. People work. Boxcar goes back.

CARL NOMURA: When the winter comes, all the boxcars were rolled back into Dear Lodge where there was a huge roundhouse. And we lived in homes there, and we did winter work. My mother, for example, got the job of shoveling sand into a huge furnace.

DAN OLSON: Did your mother or another family member tried to pass as a man for a time, but was found out?

CARL NOMURA: My mother, she passed as a man. She wore a big cap and wore men's overall, and she got the job.

DAN OLSON: Why did she-- because of there was no hiring of women for the work that was needed?

CARL NOMURA: That's right. Then the boss caught her breastfeeding me, and she was fired on the spot. Let me say a little bit more about my mother. She was a battered wife. When she was about due to have her first child, my father went away someplace. There was no arrangement with a doctor or a hospital, midwife, or anything. She delivered that first baby by herself.

And being a city girl, she really had never seen animals give birth. She didn't know much about her anatomy. So my oldest brother was born. She dragged out the placenta and wondered if that was connected to her someplace inside. She was 18 years old. And she delivered five of her six children. I was one of them.

DAN OLSON: The Nomura family moved to Los Angeles to run a small grocery. Carl Nomura was a typical kid, or was he? As a kid, he recalls, he started digging holes all over the family yard. Nomura says his hole digging was an obsession. He remembers his mother took stock of the situation and suggested burying a junked family car in one of Carl's holes.

CARL NOMURA: I must have been about 10 years old. I just couldn't control myself. I had to dig holes. So I dug these holes in our backyard. Some were good for about outhouse size, the very depths. I did this all day long.

DAN OLSON: What was this about, do you think?

CARL NOMURA: I don't know. We had an old 1923 Chevy that died, and it just sat in our yard rotting. My mother surveyed the situation and said, let's bury that car in Carl's biggest hole. And it was a perfect fit. And we covered it up. We covered up all the holes and we had our yard again.

DAN OLSON: This must have taken forever to bury a Chevy.

CARL NOMURA: No. Covering holes is a lot easier than digging one. And everybody helped because everybody wanted to get rid of those holes.

DAN OLSON: The Chevy is still there?

CARL NOMURA: 45 years later, I was on a business trip to LA. So I decided to visit the old grocery store. And the neighborhood had pretty rundown. And the sight of our grocery store was a junkyard. And I found the owner sitting in his office, which was a shack made out of corrugated iron. And I said, see, do you know about that car that's buried?

He said, yeah, whenever it rained, I would get a depression there. So curiosity got the best of me. So I dug out a '23 Chevrolet. And some car nut really admire that car, because he was after the engine parts, which were still in mint condition because of all the oil. He paid $500 for it.

DAN OLSON: More than the car was worth knew, perhaps.

CARL NOMURA: My father bought that car in 1927 for $35.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura would eventually become a physicist with achievements in semiconductor research. But growing up in Los Angeles, Nomura remembers there was little encouragement to pursue education. Here's more of our conversation.

CARL NOMURA: As far as I was concerned, I was going to become a field hand like everybody else in the neighborhood, or at most, a truck driver. And the algebra teacher said, since you are such a marginal student, don't take-- don't sign up for geometry, and take the seat of a deserving student, instead learn to work with your hands. Take woodshop and autoshop and two hours of study hall so you can keep up in social studies and English.

DAN OLSON: Wasn't that a shock to your pride? Didn't that hurt your pride to hear that advice?

CARL NOMURA: I was thunderstruck to think that my teacher thought I was stupid. So instead of following her advice, I took the algebra book home, studied it, and I solved every problem in the book. Then I bought a second hand advanced algebra book, and I did the same there. And suddenly, I knew more algebra than anybody in school.

DAN OLSON: Did the teacher see this?

CARL NOMURA: Yes. From there, I got all A's.

DAN OLSON: So the teacher had a transformation and you had a transformation.

CARL NOMURA: I took solid geometry and she was the teacher. And she didn't say anything about my stupidity.

DAN OLSON: Did you look her up years later or try to communicate with her?

CARL NOMURA: Yeah. It must have been about 40 years later. I found her in retirement in Oklahoma. So I wrote her a thank you letter for saving me. And she didn't remember the incident at all. She just remembered me as being a diligent student.

DAN OLSON: Well, what a good memory.

CARL NOMURA: Yeah.

DAN OLSON: Somebody had saved some of your papers. Am I making this up?

CARL NOMURA: In that geometry, solid geometry class, I derived the formula for a spherical segment, which is that part of the sphere you'd get if you passed a plane through it. And I derived that thing, and I demonstrated it on the blackboard. Well, she said, you know, by a coincidence, I happened to open up that book we used and your solution dropped out. So I had thought about you not a week before.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura. You're listening to voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson.

Carl Nomura was 19 and living in Los Angeles with his parents on December 7th, 1941. Japan's attack that day on Pearl Harbor brought the United States into World War II. Shortly after the attack, the federal government ordered the detention of people of Japanese heritage, whether American citizens or not.

Carl Nomura and his family and 120,000 others were detained. They gave up businesses, homes and possessions and were placed in 10 internment camps. The Nomura family was bused to Manzanar in California. Nomura says he leapt at the chance to leave the camp to become a laborer on farms in Idaho.

In a strange twist, Nomura was initially rejected during World War II as unfit for military service, because he was classified as an enemy alien. Then during his internment, Nomura was classified 1A and drafted into the army. Nomura remembers vividly the shock, anger and disbelief among Japanese-Americans at being ordered to the internment camps. Here's more of my conversation with Carl Nomura.

What was the reaction of the Nomura family when the order came down?

CARL NOMURA: Well, we thought this madness will disappear in a couple of weeks. We never heard of Pearl Harbor. And we thought, god, those stupid Japanese started bombing Pearl Harbor. What a disaster.

DAN OLSON: Because you identified yourself as Americans.

CARL NOMURA: Yeah. My mother was really disappointed.

DAN OLSON: But the order was unrelenting in its nature.

CARL NOMURA: Yeah. So we got rid of our stuff. And we were lucky that there were big boys around so that nobody came to rob us, but the helpless ones had people to just walk through their homes and help themselves to whatever they wanted.

DAN OLSON: I'm jumping way ahead. Nothing was left when families came back, including your family.

CARL NOMURA: That's right. Because my brothers thought it's not going to be a two-month fiasco.

DAN OLSON: So what did you do physically? I mean, did you lock the front door of the store?

CARL NOMURA: My brother had a trucking business. So he put our belongings on the truck, and he parked it in a friendly neighbor's place. But the friendly neighbor moved away. And we came back four years later, everything was gone. So we had nothing. We each got $25 and a one-way ticket to wherever we came from.

DAN OLSON: So when the order came down, the Nomura family and what 110,000, 120,000 other Japanese-Americans were relocated?

CARL NOMURA: Yes.

DAN OLSON: Concentrated?

CARL NOMURA: Los Angeles at the time.

DAN OLSON: You were 18, 19?

CARL NOMURA: I was 19. And my mother said, I'm only a guest in this country. So let's do what the government wants us to do.

DAN OLSON: She said she was only a guest in this country.

CARL NOMURA: And the reason for that, our forefathers really envisioned America as being a country for the Western Europeans. So they enacted a law that Asians could not become citizens in 1792. And that's why she could not become naturalized, and that's why there were so many unfair laws.

DAN OLSON: But you were born and your brothers and sisters were born in the United States. You were American.

CARL NOMURA: I was born in United States. So I was an American citizen.

DAN OLSON: The first stop was Manzanar.

CARL NOMURA: Manzanar.

DAN OLSON: Manzanar is in California.

CARL NOMURA: California. It's near the Eastern border of California, about 250 miles North of LA.

DAN OLSON: And we're talking high plains desert, what are we talking?

CARL NOMURA: Well, it used to be-- Manzanar means Apple Orchard. It used to be fruitful years ago, but the source of the water was China Lake and the Manzanar river and so on. The City of Los Angeles bought China Lake, sucked out all the water, and that became a desert in the late '20s. So when we got to Manzanar, we found a place that was barren. The only thing growing were tumbleweeds and cactus.

DAN OLSON: So you pull up to the gate of Manzanar, you go in. Where do families end up staying? What are the living accommodations?

CARL NOMURA: Well, we got on a train and were herded on the train by-- well, the army was in charge. And we got to Manzanar and we saw this barren place. And we found out how rotten that was. When the sands-- we had windstorms. We would have sandstorms. The sandstorms were so fierce that it came through our barracks. It was in our food. People who parked their cars at Manzanar had their cars sandblasted. They had no paint when they left.

DAN OLSON: What was there to do at Manzanar for a 19 year old, for anyone?

CARL NOMURA: Well, we were able to get jobs there. The professionals like medical doctors, dentists, and so on, got $16 a month. The unskilled like me, I was at the time, got $8, and I got a job as a ditch digger. And people who wanted to work worked.

DAN OLSON: How did you find out about the opportunity to get out of Manzanar as a manual laborer up in the fields, the beet fields in Idaho?

CARL NOMURA: Well, after making many, many attempts to get out of that camp, it was a catch-22 situation. I just couldn't get there. If I found a job, the clearance took so long, the job disappeared. And after a while, I just gave up. And when I found out about the opportunity of going to Manzanar, I mean to Idaho to be a field hand, I jumped at the chance.

DAN OLSON: Just to establish one thing before we get you to Idaho, Manzanar was a prison. You were not allowed to leave.

CARL NOMURA: It's surrounded by barbed wires and on the corners, they had towers where soldiers stationed themselves with a machine gun. And if you crossed the-- if you went beyond the barbed wire, they were authorized to shoot us.

DAN OLSON: What was going on in your mind? What was going on in your mother's mind, your brothers and sisters mind?

CARL NOMURA: I said, why is it happening to us? I'm an American citizens. Is all this stuff about justice, the pledge to the flag, which says with justice and liberty for all? I didn't have justice, I didn't have freedom, but I did have life. I found out my legal status after I got out of camp, when the internal-- I mean, the Selective Service called me in. And I became 1A.

So I asked, what was my classification before? And it turned out to be 4C, which is enemy alien, ineligible for military service. So evidently, I lost my citizenship while I was in the camp. And I asked, why do you want me in the army, if I'm an enemy alien ineligible for military service? He said, sorry, you're an American citizen now. That's how I got into the army.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura, Japanese-American internment camp detainee, World War II veteran and retired Honeywell company scientist and executive. You're listening to voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Dan Olson.

Japanese-Americans weren't the only people detained by the US government during World War II. Up to 11,000 German-Americans and as many as 2,000 Italian-Americans were detained. Then there were hundreds of German and Italian military personnel. They'd been captured overseas and were brought to this country, and made prisoners of war. Here's more of my conversation with Carl Nomura.

A couple of times in your bouncing around like a ping pong ball from various jobs, you notice the treatment of prisoners of war, German prisoners of war and other prisoners of war. What effect did that have on you?

CARL NOMURA: That really-- that had a huge effect on me. Actually, it was the Italian prisoners of war, and we were still at war with them. When I was through with the sugar beet works in Idaho, I was transferred back to Manzanar by an armed guard. And this armed guard had a pistol pointed at me in case I tried to do anything funny. He treated me like a criminal. He didn't talk to me. If I went to the urinal, he stood behind me.

But anyhow, when we went through Reno, I noticed a bunch of soldiers wandering around playing the slot machines. And they wore a patch that said Italy, and they wore brand new army woolens. And they were Italian prisoners of war. And that's when I decided what I was going to do with my life, and that is to correct this kind of injustice, to make sure that other people aren't treated unjustly by the government.

DAN OLSON: Now, do you feel like you've made headway in progress in that endeavor?

CARL NOMURA: Yes. I spoke up a lot about injustices to American minorities.

DAN OLSON: It's a stupid sounding question, but do you think if Norway or if Sweden attacked the United States of America or Poland or Italy, choose your European country, that there would be the same reaction of rounding up people, or in some other way, now in a more modern form, vilifying them or placing them on watch lists at airports and so on?

CARL NOMURA: An analogous situation did arise at the beginning of the war. There were 500,000 Italian aliens who chose to remain aliens, and there's a million and a half Germans who chose to-- they could become citizens, but they chose not to be. General de Witt was in charge of the Western command, and he suggested that we round up those people. But that didn't-- that was kiboshed in Congress right away.

DAN OLSON: Now, in fairness, in World War I, German-Americans and German aliens, especially here in Minnesota, suffered mightily. We had civilian spies that infiltrated their ranks in some communities in Minnesota, New Ulm and elsewhere. So is that some kind of indication? Do you think that, well, yeah, we discriminate kind of equally?

CARL NOMURA: There are Caucasians and they look like everybody else. I stand out. Well, anyhow. Now, how are you going to mistreat the parents of the Eisenhowers or Mayor Laguardia, Joe DiMaggio? Different ball game.

DAN OLSON: Different ball game.

CARL NOMURA: Yeah.

DAN OLSON: Based totally on skin color, on ethnicity, on race?

CARL NOMURA: That's right. Incidentally, this internment of the Japanese-American-- Japanese people was declared unconstitutional. That's why we were given a reparation.

DAN OLSON: That happened in how many years later, 30, 40 years later?

CARL NOMURA: It happened in '88. So it's 44 years later.

DAN OLSON: Was it welcomed more or less unanimously by the Japanese-American community in this country as finally, we have been treated properly?

CARL NOMURA: But 40% of the people had died already. And the people that died were the ones that really need the help.

DAN OLSON: And the money we're talking about is how much?

CARL NOMURA: $20,000. In 1946 dollars, that would equate to about $1,000.

DAN OLSON: And so it's a token, obviously. Was it a slap in the face? Was it ignominious? Was it an indignity?

CARL NOMURA: No. I'm glad to get it.

DAN OLSON: Does it wipe the slate clean?

CARL NOMURA: And a lot of people have asked me, don't you feel bad about receiving that money? I said, yeah, the country is in tough times. I feel badly. But I think the leaders had to be hit between the horns hard enough so that they don't do that to other people.

DAN OLSON: Do you think they learned a lesson, the leaders?

CARL NOMURA: I don't think so. Look at all the prisoners in Guantanamo. And the law that applied to them is the same as the one that applied to us, and that is guilty until proven innocent, rather than the other way around, which is supposed to be the land of the-- law of the land, which is innocent until proven guilty.

DAN OLSON: Let's turn to a little bit more about you internally and personally. Why do you think you have been a survivor and a thriver? Have you figured out what goes on inside your head?

CARL NOMURA: Yes. The high school experience of excelling in something really made a large impression on me that it was fun doing something well. And the other is, I decided a long time ago that I could spend a lifetime moaning and groaning about the injustices, but I had too many other things to do, so I decided to just kiss that off and forget. Let bygones be bygones.

DAN OLSON: Did somebody teach you that? Is that from your mother, less likely your father or some family member?

CARL NOMURA: Probably from my mother. So I never complained a word about the past.

DAN OLSON: Water under the bridge.

CARL NOMURA: Water under the bridge. I just-- there are too many other interesting things to do.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura, Japanese-American internment camp detainee, World War II military veteran and retired Honeywell company scientist and executive. This is voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News, I'm Dan Olson.

During the war, Nomura applied to colleges all over the country, including the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis. The U accepted him in 1943. After the war ended, Nomura completed his PhD in physics at Minnesota. Years later, he won the U's distinguished achievement, Outstanding Graduate Award. Nomura remembers most institutions rejected his college applications. Here's more of our conversation.

CARL NOMURA: All of them turned me down, excepting for University of Minnesota and City College of New York.

DAN OLSON: Why do you think all of the colleges-- what are we talking about, a half a dozen, a dozen? Why did they turn you down?

CARL NOMURA: The reason they gave me was that since I was imprisoned, I was a security risk.

DAN OLSON: You've identified or by your name, they've picked up on you as Japanese-American?

CARL NOMURA: Yeah. There's one State college or university that said I could go because my grade point was high, but I would have to do Magna cum laude level work. And the policy of that college was got a degree with a D average. I had to show them $300 in cash, when the fees were only $25. So clearly, they didn't want me. So Minnesota was a clear winner.

DAN OLSON: What did Minnesota say to you?

CARL NOMURA: They welcomed me with open arms. And when I said, say, I can't go back to California. So would you consider me a Minnesota resident so that I could have a residence fee? They allowed that.

DAN OLSON: In retrospect, why do you think the University of Minnesota behaved that way toward you?

CARL NOMURA: They probably had a very enlightened Board of Regents.

DAN OLSON: I mean, there were-- it wasn't just you as it turns out, it was several dozen or maybe even a few hundred.

CARL NOMURA: I looked up the records several years ago and the year 19-- for the year 1946, there were 500 Japanese-Americans at the University of Minnesota. And at the other college that I mentioned, there were two. And they were probably Japanese people with names that sounded Finnish or Irish like, Ohara, which could be mistaken for O'Hara or Marquier, a Finnish name could be Japanese, I don't know, something like that. But I was so grateful to the University of Minnesota that years later, when the government gave us a reparation of $20,000, I gave to Minnesota. And the company that I worked for, Honeywell, matched it with 50%, so they got $30,000.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura has written a book about his life. It includes his reflections on his decades long marriage to his first wife, who died in a car crash. Nomura says he was not a model husband and had to force himself to learn how to be a better spouse. In the book, Nomura also recounts business adventures, including a Honeywell assignment to Japan, the land of his forebears. One Japanese businessman took Nomura into his confidence and revealed his company's success in copying a profitable Honeywell photographic innovation. Here's more of our conversation.

CARL NOMURA: I was sent to Japan as a consultant. And I met a man, a vice president of some Japanese company, and I was introduced to him as somebody from this company in Japan. So he started bragging about how he spent $12 million in so many years copying the Honeywell autofocus device. He didn't succeed, but his successor did.

So I promptly booked a passage back to Minneapolis, talked to the CEO and told him what was happening. He said, let's sue these guys. And I got the lawyers going. He took 10 years or something. No, it's less than that. Something like six years. And Honeywell won. And they brought 12 Japanese camera makers to their knees and collected almost $400 million. That was the most profitable thing I did for the company.

DAN OLSON: Among many profitable things to be fair.

CARL NOMURA: With that, I think I received a hearty handclasp.

DAN OLSON: So what's your major sociological contribution? You have your book, Sleeping on Potatoes, A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower. What's your contribution to the sociologic dimension of our existence?

CARL NOMURA: Well, I was married to Louise for 48 years. And I think we fought every single day until I hit upon the idea that we're not kind to each other. So I came up with the idea that every day before we get up, we're going to think of something kind to do for the other and do it and not necessarily tell the other person.

DAN OLSON: How did you come upon this principle?

CARL NOMURA: I don't know. I tried everything else, going to marriage counselors.

DAN OLSON: Because you saw yourself as somehow a problem husband, a problem spouse?

CARL NOMURA: Yes. I think I didn't treat her properly. For a successful marriage, there had to be mutual respect. That was lacking.

DAN OLSON: You were a hard driving guy in corporate America. And was that an issue?

CARL NOMURA: Yeah, I was about a-- I'm about an eight sigma type a. It's a do it now person, which drives my wife nuts. Well, anyhow, the upshot of all this is even though every act of kindness could be small, if you did it every day for, say, 365 days, the change is enormous.

DAN OLSON: Did it work?

CARL NOMURA: It worked. Our marriage was fantastic for that one year. And I was the beneficiary because you can't go wrong if you wake up with a good thought.

DAN OLSON: It's powerful. It sounds powerful, but widely overlooked, I'm thinking

CARL NOMURA: I have explained this to a number of people. And they say, hey, I've been trying your method, and my marriage is a lot better.

DAN OLSON: You could probably make a lot more money now. You've already made some money. I think you could patent this. I'm being a little sarcastic.

CARL NOMURA: My great joy about this is that I found out that when Aldous Huxley was interviewed on his death bed, they asked for his wisdom. And he said, be kinder. This guy had the same idea I did.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura, a real pleasure talking to you. Thanks so much for your time.

CARL NOMURA: Thank you for inviting me.

DAN OLSON: Carl Nomura lived in Minnesota for more than 40 years as a college student, and then a research scientist and executive for Honeywell. The book recounting his life is titled Sleeping on Potatoes, A Lumpy Adventure from Manzanar to the Corporate Tower. It's published by Erasmus books. You've been listening to voices of Minnesota from Minnesota Public Radio News. I'm Dan Olson.

GARY EICHTEN: Well, that does it for our midday program today on this Pearl Harbor day. Gary Eichten here. I'd like to thank you for tuning in. Reminder that right after news headlines, it's off to Washington for today's edition of Talk of the Nation Science Friday. Sarah Meyer is the producer of our program, Curtis Gilbert, our assistant producer, Randy Johnson, technical director with help this week from Sam Keenan and Noah Smith. Again, I'm Gary Eichten. Monday, we'll remember Eugene McCarthy. Hope you can tune in.