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Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Gordon Hirabayashi Interview V
Narrator: Gordon Hirabayashi
Interviewers: Tom Ikeda (primary), Alice Ito (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: May 4, 2000
Densho ID: denshovh-hgordon-05-0010

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TI: Okay. Let's go back to Spokane, and now that you've been to both Heart Mountain and Minidoka, and you're now in Spokane looking for opportunities for people to relocate. Just talk about that in terms of some of the resistance or support that you got in Spokane.

GH: Well, in, in a general way, I'm working as one person trying to make some openings here and there, so I'm, I'm not very visible. So a lot of people weren't seeing me as somebody shaking the roots here and there. So the quick answer to your question is, not much one way or the other was said about me by others, except those who were very, happened to be one-on-one with me in some way and knew what I was doing. The, I did some things in general. I had, through my experience of working as a student in the University of Washington, through the University of Washington YMCA, which was an independent -- when I say independent, I mean nonfraternity organization, you know, the, you know those Sigma, Sigma Si and Alpha Kappa Delta or whatever, the Greek initials, fraternities and sororities. They, they were very racist. Before the war, it was just out-and-out racist. There's no way around it. But it was accepted as the thing to do, and the city followed, I mean, permitted any kind of discrimination. A restaurant that didn't want to allow a, native Indians or Asians to come in, even if you were dressed decently and willing to pay the price. "Sorry, we don't have room for you." Or, "We don't -- " Some of 'em just boldly said, "We don't allow non-whites to come in here." And hotels were like that. And some of 'em tried to gloss it over by saying, "Well, you know, we have no vacancy." We had professors who had experiments -- people lined up, applying for rooms, and people who lined up after the Asians were turned down, "No rooms," would get rooms. So we knew there's no, no way around it. They had these kinds of situations. And in my own personal experience, I, I had a very tremendous experience in 1940. That's just the year before the war. I was sent on a scholarship from the University of Washington YMCA to go to a leadership training school. The people who came were from organizations, YM and YW on campus --

TI: Yeah. Before we do that, too far, because we did go to that, I think, in interview two...

GH: Oh, I see.

TI: ...pretty much, in depth. But I think there was another incident in Eastern Washington with a restaurant, the, I believe it was called the Paramount Restaurant, during this period. Do you recall that?

GH: Oh. That's in Idaho, Caldwell, Idaho. I had a college friend, Caucasian person, whose father was a lawyer, and one of the well-to-do in the family, I mean, in the community. I stayed, I stayed as his guest at his home. I didn't realize to what extent I was breaking certain kinds of codes, but he being a fairly well-established person, nobody came in as a protest, "How come you're having this kind of disgraceful activity like?" And so I was there. And after being hosted so warmly, I said to him, "I'd like to take you out to dinner. Pick a restaurant. Pick a nice place to go to, and it's my treat." So he said, "Okay. We'll go to Paramount."

And so we went to Paramount, and walked in. I didn't realize there were signs out there saying, "No Japs," because there were sugar beet workers there from camps and so on. So that they didn't want, they wanted to really enforce this not just a silent rule. So they -- oh, we sat down. The waitress came in and took our order. And we just, we didn't order anything special, just regular fare. And, and then wondering, we were getting a little, at least I was getting a little suspicious. Service was so slow. Eventually she came and said, "Are you Japanese?" And I thought, well, here's what I was concerned about. So I said, "No. I'm American. I'm of Japanese ancestry, but I'm American." "Oh, well, if you're Japanese ancestry, we can't serve you." Said, "Why not?" "Well, it's a regulation the boss made." "Is the boss around?" "Well, I'll see. He was here a while ago." And I said, "Well, if he's around, I'd like to, if he could come over, I'd like to ask him some questions." And after quite a while, she came back and said, "He didn't want to talk to you right at the table here, but he's standing over there at the end of the counter, and he's ready to talk to you." So I said, "Okay." So my friend and I got up to go see him, and about three or four steps before I got to him, he started to apologize. He says, "Gee, I'm sorry you have to go through this." And I listened to him, and he was apologetic. He's saying, "You know, I hate to do this, but I'm forced to do it." I said, "Why?" He says, "Well, if I don't, don't follow the line, I'll have people boycotting me, walking out." I said, "Well, we've been in there about an hour trying to get served, but I didn't see anybody protesting, not to us, and I didn't see anybody walking off in the middle of their dinner." And he said, "Well, that's what I'm told would happen." And I said, "Well, you have an empty table right near the entrance. Let me test whether you're correct or not, or your friends are correct or not. If anybody comes in the door and -- they could see me, 'cause you have to, you have to see that somebody's sitting there that's non-white. So I'll sit where he could see me, and my friend could be sitting on the other side, and if anybody comes in, sees me, and leaves, I'll pay for an average meal so that you wouldn't lose, you wouldn't have lost that." "Oh, I can't have you do that." I said, "No. I'm asking for it. I want to test this, whether you're correct or not. I'm curious myself." He says, "No. I can't let you do this." And he wouldn't, he was giving me this kind of response. And about that time, the waitress said, "What do I do with this?" It was what we had ordered. I said, "Well, your boss doesn't think it's safe for me to eat here, so you might as well -- " I could have, if I were angry, I would have said, "Chuck that in the garbage," or whatever. But I didn't say -- those things aren't possible to package up. Otherwise, I could take it off, I could take it as take-out. And he said, "No, no. Sit here at the counter and eat it." Well, it was, it was at least an invitation. It wasn't up-front. And so I, I thought he was being kind, personally kind, up to that point, so I said, "Well, okay." I asked Frank, "How about it? Do you want to sit there and eat it with me?" He said, "Sure." So we sat down, and we took about an hour to eat that. And near as I could see, nothing happened. Nobody left after seeing me or, you know, there wasn't any change in behavior.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.