<Begin Segment 7>

JA: Okay. Can you relate to me what the Nikkei community in Bellevue was like?

MH: The Nikkei community in Bellevue was a very busy one. We had a Nisei (Club), we call it the Seinenkai, which was organized in 1935. And, and we had a clubhouse, which was built in 1927, so we were all able to use it for different things like judo and kendo, dancing. We had dances and basketballs, (movies, Japanese school) and Bukkyokai used it for their purpose, you know, reasons, too.

JA: Okay. About how many Nikkei farmers were in Bellevue?

MH: At that time there were sixty Bellevue farmers, and there were about 300 people of Japanese national that lived in Bellevue at that time before evacuation.

JA: And how is that in relationship to the number of people living in Bellevue?

MH: At that time our population in Bellevue was one thousand people. So you could see the difference, how much the greater percentage of Japanese were there in comparison to that.

JA: So you were a significant part of the community at that time.

MH: Yes, that's true.

JA: And can you describe the other citizens of Bellevue, what they did and where they worked?

MH: (Yes). All the Bellevue people were kind of exclusive type of people. They lived on the waterfront and things like that. And they were either doctors, physicians, and all the people worked in Seattle. There weren't any jobs in Bellevue unless you had a gas station or a little grocery store or something like that and rest were all farmers or milk farmers or something like that was in Bellevue.

JA: And about how many non-Nikkei farms were there in Bellevue?

MH: Non-Nikkei farms? There were only about couple of them. They were all Japanese.

JA: So the vast majority Nikkei...

MH: All Japanese, that's right.

JA: I see.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.