Densho Digital Archive - Robert Coombs Interview (denshovh-crobert-01-0012)

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AI: Okay, well, we're continuing our interview with Mr. Robert Coombs. And we were just, before the break, we were talking about the sadness of the requirement that Japanese and Japanese American families had to leave their homes. And that you were teaching at the time. And one day they were there in the classroom, and the next day your seats were empty. The students had gone. And that this was in April of 1942. So, at that point then, you finished teaching that school year there?

RC: Yes. I had been appointed on a duration, meaning for as long as the war (lasted), I was to hold that person's job for him. And the board of education met in June, towards the end of the school year, and decided that there were fifteen of us in Sacramento High School who were on a duration appointment and they could not afford to keep us, that the impact (of the loss of) population was so great that they would not need us. As it turned out, I think three people (...) women, (...) whose husbands were in the service, (...) at the beginning of the new school year they were hired for a duration appointment. (...)

AI: But because so many of the Japanese American families had been moved out --

RC: Yes.

AI: -- that the school population had dropped drastically.

RC: Yes.

AI: And therefore, the need for the teachers was no longer there.

RC: Well, of course, I wondered, "Well, now what am I going to do?" (...) I checked around the whole Sacramento County area, and even into other counties, Solano County and Placer County and they had an overflow of teachers that they were doing the same thing, too. And so I communicated with my master teacher at Stanford at the Department of Education. He was very glad to hear from me. He asked me to come down to Stanford. And when I got there he'd already made out a portion of an application for me to go ahead with my teaching, but in the relocation center school. Stanford was preparing the curriculum for three of the relocation centers. And he recommended that I go to Idaho.

AI: Well, when he recommended that, what was your reaction?

RC: Oh, I was thrilled. [Laughs] I had never been to Idaho. And he said, he handed me the application and asked me to finish making it out and sign it. And he had an address -- an envelope already addressed to the War Relocation Authority in Washington. And he said, "When you go home," he says, "I think you better get yourself ready because I think you'll probably hear from them within a week, and you'll be on your way." And so he said, "Get all of your books that you had in education, and other books that you think you might need in a core class, history, social studies and English literature." So, I signed the document and he put it in the envelope that already had a stamp on it and it was mailed. And I think it was about nine days (later), I received my instructions to report to Twin Falls at the Rogerson Hotel, and somebody would meet me there.