<Begin Segment 2>

DH: In this one it says, "The time..." -- and this is an editorial you wrote, let's see, this is February of 1942. It says, "The time has come to hear out the truth of our words, written two months ago in an extra edition of The Review published the day after Hawaii was bombed." And then, you're writing about how... let's see, it was this Congressman, Henry McLemore...

WW: McLemore.

DH: McLemore... who said, "Personally, I hate the Japanese and that goes for all of them." And you said, "That he has the intelligence of a blind pig."

WW: Well, McLemore wrote for the, for the Daily Press.

DH: Uh-huh.

WW: Again, he's terribly biased.

DH: Uh-huh. Do you remember this editorial, do you remember how you took a stand to say that...

WW: [Laughs]

DH: ...you were saying that, " Who will grow the fruits and vegetables, if the Japanese are evacuated?" "Who will grow the fruits and vegetables if the Japanese are evacuated?"

WW: Yes, I suppose, I suppose that's right.

DH: Uh-huh. And later on, in another editorial, it turned out that was true, that there was a shortage of, of produce. And you sort of wrote, 'I told you so', in (your) editorial.

WW: Oh, dear.

MW: [Laughs]

WW: Did I say that?

DH: [Laughs] How did you come to make these decisions? You said that you were the only ones.

WW: Yes. We pushed it as far as we could. What was your question again?

DH: How did you and Milly decide to support the Japanese community?

WW: I don't think we decided to support the Japanese community. We took the stand that it was all wrong to do anything else. So we... and... well.

DH: And you were the only ones on the West Coast to take that position.

WW: I beg your pardon?

DH: You were the only ones on the West Coast to take that position.

WW: There was a weekly newspaper in northern California, that wrote one editorial...

MW: Against the evacuation.

WW: ...what we were doing. And that... that was all there was to it. We...

DH: Because it was wrong, you said, "...to imprison American citizens."

WW: That's right.

DH: And you coined this phrase, "American Japanese."

WW: I beg your pardon, what?

DH: You were calling them "American Japanese."

MW: Instead of calling them "Japanese" you called them "American Japanese" because they were citizens.

WW: That's right. That's right. Otherwise it was just, "Japs" and we did not think very highly of that.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.