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TI: Okay. So let's just set the scene. So this is about February, March, 1943. Then Floyd Schmoe, you meet Floyd Schmoe in Spokane, and from there you're now going to visit some of the camps. Before you even talk about going to the camps, why are you going to the camps?

GH: Well, my, the, the work program that was approved with the federal office, court office, was that I would be working on a Quaker managed process, working on the relocation process of some of the people moving from camps into regular life. And so Spokane being one of the places for those who had either, settling in Eastern Washington or had -- some, some people preferred to locate in Spokane until such time as when Seattle, for example, became available for a move, rather than to move to Chicago, which was one of the big centers during the early part of camp release. Many people headed for Chicago or some of the other cities, Detroit, St. Louis, places like that, Minneapolis. But those who had western return in mind or wished to think about that possibility, found Spokane as a option.

TI: Well, before going to Heart Mountain, what preparation or information did you have to gather about Spokane before going to Heart Mountain?

GH: Nothing in particular. It was a city of a little over a 100,000. It was, at the time, the second city in the state, Seattle being the main metropolis. Spokane, it was about, Seattle was about 300,000. Spokane was around 100,000, little over a 100,000, and then Tacoma, 96,000, something like that at that time. So Tacoma and Spokane were fairly close together in terms of size. And other than that, I didn't know too much. And it was, and one of the things I was doing was to find out what kinds of jobs were short of people, manpower, and, and tried to find situations that would be suitable for potential Japanese releases.

TI: How about your knowledge of the Japanese American population in Spokane?

GH: I didn't have much. And it was, it was still, it was very small population. There was some Japanese there from prewar, and then maybe there was about the same number of people that had gravitated there during the -- I guess we were about one year into the war, so that some of the people from the camp had moved over. And then...

TI: This was even before you were there?

GH: Yeah.

TI: So that population was you had a prewar population, and then you had some that had already migrated from the camps?

GH: Yeah.

TI: Got it. Okay.

GH: And those who were there from the camps were really the pioneers. They, they took the risks moving out to an area that might have been very hostile in different ways, and, and in this respect, it might have been easier to move into a city in the East or Midwest. So, so being a one-man person, I didn't expect a deluge of people applying. And in fact, the job was to develop some potentialities and possibilities, and then, and then to -- so we're talking, when we're visiting the camps at Heart Mountain and then subsequently Minidoka, we could be talking to people who were interested in going out, what kinds of things they were willing to work in.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.