Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Junkoh Harui Interview
Narrator: Junkoh Harui
Interviewer: Donna Harui
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: July 31, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-hjunkoh-01-0013

<Begin Segment 13>

DH: Describe your memories of the move to Moses Lake.

JH: Well, the physical moving, driving from Bainbridge to Moses Lake which probably was a very harrowing move for my parents, I frankly cannot remember. However, I can remember the reception we got when we got to Moses Lake. It was not pleasant. For one thing, you cannot blame the community so much because most of them, most of 'em have never seen a Japanese before. And so with all the stories going around and the propaganda, they were probably very fearful or very suspicious of any person of Japanese ancestry living in their community. So the young men, when they reached there, tried to find jobs on the nearby farms. And there was tremendous amount of resistance to that by the white community, even as far as to say that, "I will never have a Jap working for me, never." And slowly some of the fellows did find jobs, and the community found out that they were decent people, and they were extremely hard working people, so they began to treasure some of the young fellows that started to work for 'em. In fact, some of 'em became foremen because they were so dependable. My --

DH: It must've been really traumatic... I'm sorry, go ahead.

JH: My personal trauma was going to school. And again, the same thing happened. We were met with suspicion.

[Interruption]

DH: Your personal memories of life at Moses Lake -- you were in the second grade then, third grade then?

JH: Yes, I was. Mhmm. And in the playground -- this is one of the first tastes of racial hatred that I had experienced in my life because basically I had no experiences of that in previous life when I was a child. And, I would -- I remember his name, I will not mention it, but anyway, he was a couple grades older than I was, and he would beat the hell out of me every day in the playground, and everybody would stand around and watch. And this went on for about a month, until I finally proved myself that I was not an ogre, or whatever they thought I was. And also, during some of that times, we would play war and, of course, you can almost guess what side I was on. And then during the wintertime, we'd throw snowballs, and there was always rocks in my snowball that was directed to me. So it was not a pleasant situation. Even the school principal, who usually we admire, due to a lot of the propaganda that was goin' around in those days, would mention the word 'Jap' a lot of times. Which, of course, was very disturbing to me. [Interruption] I think it took a while for myself to get accepted by the rest of the children, and I think I did command a little bit more respect later. I remember there was a wonderful teacher at the time, by the name of Inez Crillette, who recognized my problems, and she went out of her way to shelter me a little bit and to understand what I was going through. And I valued her protection very much, and it was a great comfort to me. In fact, I looked her up after the war and we had a nice little visit.

DH: It must have been a rude awakening to the real world for a third grade boy.

JH: That's correct, that's correct. Yes, it was.

DH: Besides the nice schoolteacher, what else got you through that, because you must have dreaded going to school?

JH: Well, I guess part of that, your strength comes from the fact -- and I didn't mention this in the previous conversation about what values my parents taught to me, but one of 'em was education. And she always wanted -- at least Mom did. I don't remember my dad ever saying such a, much thing about education, but my mom valued education highly. And so I dug my nose into the books and sometimes I didn't go out to recess -- obviously you know why -- and I would do a lot of reading during recess periods.

DH: It must have been a really traumatic time for your parents too, because two of their children were stranded in Japan during the war, and then the rest of you had been displaced. Did they ever talk about that? Did they ever talk about what a hard time it was?

JH: You know, there was no mention of that situation, and this is what bothers me a little bit, of why they never even talked about Art and Terry in Japan. And with no communication, I'm sure they talked about it between themselves, but there was no communication about that when I was present.

DH: And none of your siblings ever asked, "Where are they, what will happen to them?"

JH: Not that I can recall.

DH: In retrospect, do you feel guilty that you didn't have to go to camp?

JH: In some instances I do, yeah. I -- you know, you kind of feel like you're singled out to be free, but we weren't totally free because we had people monitoring us all the time. They made sure we didn't have any short wave radios, or -- in fact, we had no radios and we had no cameras. And we were under surveillance by one of the neighbors that was -- he would come over, I think, about once a month and go through a checklist with us to see that we followed the rules of the game, if you want to call it that. So we were free, but we were imprisoned. I don't think that I am sorry I didn't go to camp. I can't really say that. From what I understand of what happened in camp, I guess I was very fortunate, but I certainly do not feel guilty for not going there.

DH: Did you feel like your family was fortunate that they had the opportunity to go to Moses Lake?

JH: I think so. I think we were able to farm and eke out a living.

DH: And that was what you did there?

JH: That's correct. We did, we raised produce and, basically potatoes and onions. And, I might add that those potatoes and onions went into the national food bank, so it helped the war cause.

DH: Raising produce for the war.

JH: That's right.

DH: So you were at Moses Lake from 1942 to 1946. Do you have any other memories from Moses Lake that you want to record?

JH: Oh, yes. Most of them are somewhat negative. I think one young Japanese man dated a Caucasian girl, and that was, that was just very traumatic for that period of time. And then, my cousin Masaru was, his mother was a TB patient, so when she delivered Masaru, excuse me, Jimmy, he had to go to a hospital in Wenatchee to be delivered. And the big headlines in the Wenatchee Herald was "Jap born in Wenatchee."

DH: Because that was a first.

JH: That was a first. That was a first. Yeah. [Pauses] All in all though, again, I treasure the fact that we were able to roam around without any fences or guards. And, gosh, I remember a lot of my play time, and... you know, playing with bull snakes, [Laughs] and running in the tumbleweeds. And it was a different type of farm life that I'll always remember.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.