<Begin Segment 17>

AI: Now, excuse me. Was your helping the Terminal Island people, was that part of your work with the JACL at that time helping...

PB: It may be...

AI: ...or was this more of an individual community activity?

PB: It may be because the JACL was active at that time in all phases of the evacuation. Now, regardless of what people now say about JACL not opposing the evacuation and things of that nature, but that time, looking back if you were living at that time, you have to understand that when this ruling came out from the government, there wasn't too much that you could do. You had to obey. If we didn't, I think we'd had a lot of problems. Now, there's a few people that disobeyed, and these lawsuits are a matter of record. I personally, when I was still there and my folks were in camp, thought very seriously of not going. Maybe I'd pull out my button, "I am Chinese" and stay. I even thought about that. But my folks and my family were in camp, so I had -- in my mind -- no choice but to join them and to worry about what is the future. So I think that many of us thought in terms of disobeying the order and saying, "Hey, I'm an American citizen. Why should I go?" But I think we did it because we were loyal citizens, and I think that makes a lot of difference. So that period of time, if you look back, many of us, we didn't want to do things, but we did it. I know that the people in Terminal Island were the same way. When they got the order they left. If they stayed there they would've been arrested and put into camp. Now, one thing that people do know is that although the people of Terminal Island, most of them ended up in Manzanar, the same thing happened to people in Bainbridge Island. They were one of the first ones. And so I got to know all the people in Bainbridge. They were in Manzanar. And as a result of it, because of their being in camp, I got to, you might say got to the point that they became relatives by marriage to several of them. So I got to know people of and the history of Bainbridge very much so. So I sympathized with their situation and didn't do anything about helping them. But afterwards found out that we had the same situation on Terminal Island.

AI: Well this is very interesting to me because I have talked to some other folks who were members of JACL from before the war, and they also said that they personally had considered resisting the order to evacuate, that they individually thought that they had their rights as American citizens and that they did consider that perhaps individually or even perhaps as an organization that JACL should consider the idea of making some statement to the government that, to the effect that this was not right.

PB: Right.

AI: And so it sounds like you had a similar idea in your mind, but...

PB: Uh-huh. I think that we become more law-abiding as a result of taking part in groups such as JACL. And so when the law said, come along and say, hey you got to do this, this is an edict of the United States government, we had a tendency to listen and to comply with it more. If we did not, then it would be different. But I think that had a lot to do with it. We were better citizens. And as a result of it, we tried to comply with what the United States government said. So that has a lot to do with it. And as I say, I'm along with a lot of other people who would've said, "Hey, I'm not going to go. I'm going to disobey the law." But it's, the law is that way. It's like going into service. There's a lot of talk about people that said, well, they don't want to go into the service for one reason or another. But my situation was a lot different. I remember in camp that when I was in the military, my folks was able to obtain the one little star. And we had little windows, and they put it in the barrack. And people would come by, and they would make obscene remarks about putting up a star, being proud of their son being in the United States military. But my folks said, and that, "We're proud that my son is able to serve and that we are Americans. And that's what we should do." So I think that the attitude of the family and parents made a lot of, a lot of difference in how we did and how we reacted. But...

AI: Right. Different families had different attitudes, and...

PB: Yeah. Right.

AI: ...the parents may have had different feelings one family to the next.

PB: As I said, I didn't want to stay in camp, and so I wanted, I went in last because of the choice to help people that needed help. I also, once I got in, I wanted to be the first one out because when I looked every morning and got up and saw those guard towers with the machine gun guards, wire fence -- we were Block 5, right next to the fence, barbed wire -- I immediately thought, "This is not for me. I got to get out." So I asked the camp director, "Quickest way, what's the best way I could get out?" Well, he said, "We're working on a project that, since there is shortage of farm labor, that we're going to get some groups together, and maybe we can put you in one of those."

So I was in one of the very first groups to go to Idaho to harvest sugar beets and potatoes. So, well, I was happy that I was out of camp because it was a completely different atmosphere when I went to Idaho. I went to Rexburg, Idaho, and every day we worked. In fact, I remember some of the hardest work I ever did in my life was during potato season up there. Oh, the potatoes were heavy, we worked all day. But at least we were free and we were not able to say, "Hey, we..." You know in camp you couldn't, in Manzanar there was one young individual that didn't know, and he snuck out through the fence. He wasn't going anywhere. He happened to be on the wrong side, and he was killed. And I think that knowing that, that feeling that you're free. So once I was on the other side of the relocation zone in Idaho, my first then thought became, "Well, what do I do? I'm here now. I'm out of the area. I've got to think of something." So I made an application. They had a governmental body that was trying to get us to, those that wanted to go to school -- I think the Friends Society may have had something to do with that. So I made an application to go to school, and that's what led me to the, back East.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.