<Begin Segment 29>

LH: And how long did you, were you with your father and the entire family in camp, how long did you remain in Minidoka?

FG: After that we came back to Seattle in 1945 in March.

LH: So that's still fairly early 'cause the war in Europe hadn't even ended yet.

FG: That's right. We were the first family -- there were two families that came back at the same time, but we were the first families back in Seattle from camp, the Kusakabes was the other family, and we were on the same train. And so then I was the first Japanese back at Bailey Gatzert and Ms. Mahon was very pleased to see me.

LH: So what was that like actually knowing that you were coming back to Seattle, but there were only going to be you and this other family? Were you worried about coming back to Seattle at all or were you happy to come back?

FG: No. Do you really want to know what was going on in my mind? What was going on in my mind was the other person, the other family, had a boy that was the same age as I was and he would be starting school at the same time, right? Well, I didn't know about him. I really wondered about him. [Laughs] I mean, he was my biggest concern and Tom didn't get there. There is something about little boys that little girls don't like, right? I don't know what it is, but anyway I felt relieved because when I got to school then Tom hadn't come yet. He waited another day before he started school [Laughs] so I was there before he was. Accepting the problem of being the first one back was that Ms. Mahon was very, very pleased to, real pleased to see me back because she liked her Japanese students a lot and she missed them, and I just represented the first of the flow back. But these are kind of child type reactions, right. Well, what she did was in her... I don't know, in her exuberance she kissed me on my forehead. Well, I had never been kissed in my life, and I thought that was so terrible. [Laughs] It was kind of this oh, yuck. But I remember that very, very distinctly. She was very glad to see the Japanese back and she treated me so, she treated me so well. I got a little bit of flack in school and it really wasn't the children themselves, I think it comes from all the media and their parents and just everything and the war. And so I remember I sat there the first day and there was a little, there was a little hakujin girl sitting behind me and then there was a boy sitting across, and they're sitting there arguing. And so finally one of them says, "Well, you ask." "No, you ask." "Okay. I'll ask." And then so Mary says to me, she says, "Eugene thinks you're Japanese, but I don't. Are you?" [Laughs] And then so I said, "Yeah, I'm Japanese." And so she says, "Well, that's okay." She says, "I like you anyway." That was my first day of school. And then I was in another class and there was a little -- poor kid -- there was a little black boy sitting next to me, and he looked at me and he said, he says, "Are you one of the Daughters of the Sons of Heaven?" And I said, "What?" [Laughs]

LH: Daughters and the Sons of Heaven?

FG: Yeah, something about son of heaven, right? The Japanese were called the Sons of -- the emperor was the Son of Heaven, that sort of thing. What he was doing was he was repeating from the comic books and things like that. Well, anyway, the whole thing just sort of, kind of blew my mind and I start crying. And so the poor kid, he got called to the office and Ms. Mahon really scolded him and then so she expelled him for a day because of me. And then she asked me, "What did he say?" and I got tears rolling down my face and I tell you. And I really didn't know what he said or what I was saying. I don't know why I was crying, but I was crying and then afterwards I even cried more because when he was expelled, I thought I did that and he didn't mean any harm. He didn't hit me or anything. Poor kid. I'll never forget. I felt so sorry for him because he was just being, just being a child. He was just being a boy and he was just repeating something that he had read and he had heard on the radio and in the movies and stuff like that. That was so funny. It was so funny. But, anyway, it wasn't funny to him. It wasn't fair to him. But that was what my first couple of days in school were. And I think Ms. Mahon did that because she wanted to make sure that when the rest of us came back then we'd be comfortable, and we wouldn't have any problems. I did have another experience that I, at age eleven it was kind of shocking. I was down on Maynard and Jackson waiting for a bus and the bus stopped, and then the woman was sitting on the window side, and she had the window open. And I was waiting to get on and she just looked down at me from the bus and she said, "You killed my son," and then she spit at me.

LH: An eleven year old girl and she spit at you?

FG: Yeah. And I thought, well, what did I do? It was kind of far so it didn't hit me. [Laughs] She missed, but the whole concept I thought, well, I don't even know your son. You don't even know me. I thought what do I have to do with your son is what I was thinking, but that was... at the age of eleven, it kind of leaves a bad impression and I have no idea why that happened or who she was or what her problem was or anything like that. But it was just kind of, it was kind of shocking.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.