Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Betty Morita Shibayama Interview
Narrator: Betty Morita Shibayama
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 27, 2003
Densho ID: denshovh-sbetty-01-0015

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AI: Well, and then, when was it that you actually did leave Hood River?

BS: It was May 13, 1942. And I remember because that's my sister Flora's birthday. And her best friend was Margie, was Margie Bryan. And her, Margie Bryan and her mother came to the train station with a cake, with a birthday cake. And she and Margie remained friends with my sister all through camp and even after, after the war she came to visit my sister in Chicago. And when I took my mother back to Oregon in the '90s, we did get to meet with Mrs. Bryan. I think she, she might have been a year older than my mother, but it was very nice to see her and for my parents, my mother to get together with her.

AI: So there were some good friends and neighbors among the Caucasians?

BS: Yes, yes.

AI: People who helped out and...

BS: Uh-huh

AI: ...who were still friendly?

BS: Oh, yes. And I don't know if I mentioned about the, that one picture that we took the day before evacuation. This was taken in front of our neighbor, they were, I guess they were about the closest Cauc-, in proximity; they were the closest Caucasian neighbor. And it was Alfred Detman. And this was his house and he took our picture the day before evacuation and it's of my grandfather and my parents and my siblings and then Mr. Hachiya. And I had heard, it was only like last year, or maybe the year before, 'cause my brother Paul passed away last year, and he remembered a lot of things. And he, he mentioned that Mr. Detman told my father when, that we're gonna be evacuated, he says, "You don't go. You and your family don't go. I'm going to hide you." And I don't know how he was planning to hide us, but he was really a very good friend of the family. He was a very good friend.

AI: And so here you were, a large family, with all these kids and he was still offering to help you.

BS: Uh-huh, he was willing to. And even, took my parents back to Hood River, I think it was 19... was it 19-, anyway, it was in the '90s and we did see... who was there with him? I think it was the son, his son, Alfred Detman's son, son or grandson, and we visited with him and he, and my dad and he had a real good time remembering the good times.

AI: Well, that is, is so interesting to me that you have some of these positive memories of people right during that time when there was so much negative --

BS: Oh yes.

AI: -- sentiment. And I'm wondering, as a young child, were you aware of that negative anti-Japanese feeling also in the community?

BS: Well, yes because we'd hear people calling out "Jap" and that. And then, and I think my older brothers and sisters probably felt it more than I did. But we had a dog, my brother Claude, someone gave us a dog for Christmas. It must have been the year before. And, well, he was still a puppy, it was, I guess it was a mutt. Anyway, 'cause he got it for Christmas, he called it Chris. And he and the dog were inseparable. But after the war broke out, one day the dog came home and it was -- my sister said she heard a gunshot, and then the dog came home with a bullet wound. And so, my brother Claude nursed it back and he stayed up nights and nursed it back to health. But my dad was, he assumed it was one neighbor and my dad would say, "Wow, must've been because he was chasing chickens or something." Well, we had chickens, too. But he said it must have been that. But I would think, Well, why did he wait 'til December, after December 7th to shoot it?" And so my brother, because he didn't want it to happen again, he tied the dog up, tied it to a tree and figured he could keep it safe that way. But you know, after seeing, the dog had the freedom and then being tied up, he couldn't stand it so he let it go. And then shortly after that he didn't return home, the dog didn't return home. And then my sister said she was working out in the strawberry field and she said she thought she heard a gunshot and she said she saw the dog walk, walk, at a distance, across the field and go toward a swampy area. And the dog never came back. And we assumed that the same thing happened, that he... it's just too bad that the dog had to suffer and you know, because of that. But I guess it was, you'd read in the, I guess my parents would read in the paper about, there was certain names that would come up that were really anti-Japanese.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.