<Begin Segment 11>

TI: Okay, so let's go to Twin Falls.

EBA: Okay.

TI: And what was the reception of people? You said you rented a house in Twin Falls, so go ahead and why don't you talk about that?

EBA: Okay. Reception in Twin Falls was not, was not kindly. I mean, initially we were just another family moving to Twin Falls. And we rented a house on Second Avenue North. And it wasn't too long before people in the town got to know what we were about and to whom we were sympathetic. And one day, my father was in a cafe in downtown Twin Falls and he, as he entered the cafe, the cafe owner was there and he knew that my father was, and my family, were sympathetic to the Japanese. And he refused service to him and just tossed him out literally, bodily tossed him out of the cafe onto the street. I was not present at that time but that's, that's what I've heard from my father. And the house, the first house we lived in when we initially got to Twin Falls, the, was a rental, and the, this same cafe owner bought the house that we were living in and he forced us to move out of the house. So we moved across the street, to another house that we rented. And it was, you know, we were called "Jap lovers," and strange things would happen to the Blue Box, a flat tire or something that, you know, wasn't just a nail in the tread. And so there was some ostracism by people in Twin Falls and some neighbors and so forth.

TI: So when these incidents happened, being bodily thrown out of a cafe, having your first house, ordered out of your first house by the cafe owner, being called names, things like, things happening to the Blue Box, what reaction did your father have? Did he ever talk about these things?

EBA: I don't recall any direct conversation with my father about that. But I can, I know from just his actions, his actions spoke louder than his words that I ever recall. He would just continue to carry on with his ministry and not be deterred by bigotry and prejudice that he encountered. It made it difficult at times. Sometimes in buying gas or so forth, people would, would refuse service to him. And the other thing, too, that I think inflamed some of the people, the Caucasians in Twin Falls, was that, as I mentioned earlier, we determined that our house, houses were, would be a hostel for people coming and going from camp and so forth. And in, I think it was the April of, it must've been 1943. In one, in that one month of April we had 267 people coming and going in our house. And part of that, people were being brought into the camp and needed a place to stay until they got that straightened out or people that were being transferred or moved, maybe they were going back east or were working on the farms or somewhere in Twin Falls. But we did have three, I think, maybe three or four young men that stayed with us permanently in the second house and they had, their family was in camp in Minidoka, but they had jobs somewhere in the town there and so during the week they stayed with us, worked their jobs to support their families and they went back on the weekends, back into the camp again.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.