<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Let's go back, we had just, you had started talking about returning to Seattle and being enrolled at Bailey Gatzert.

EBA: Yes.

TI: Let's talk about that and what it felt like coming back to Seattle and going to school. So what was Bailey Gatzert like?

EBA: Bailey Gatzert, I have good memories of Bailey Gatzert. It doesn't exist today but -- in the original building, but it was like everything's back to normal again. Like the poet said, "God is in his Heaven and all is right with the world." And it was like, okay, we're back to everything being okay, my friends are here, we're going to school and Japanese friends are there and it was a great time. It was just like, like taking a deep breath and saying, "Oh, things are back to normal."

TI: So did it feel more comfortable there than back in Twin Falls, you went to, I think, I believe Lincoln Elementary School? I mean, did it, was there a difference? Could you feel a difference?

EBA: I could feel a difference because Lincoln Elementary in Twin Falls was, it was all Caucasian, and coming -- and, I had playmates at school but it wasn't like having my friends that I had here. And so coming back to Bailey Gatzert was, was a lot different. It was, it felt safe, it felt good, it felt like, okay, everything's back to normal again.

TI: How did people who were in Seattle during the war, how did they accept the Japanese and you coming back? Was there any... yeah, what was that like?

EBA: Well, because we left a multiracial community to begin with and Bailey Gatzert being a multiracial school, I don't have any recollection of resistance to us coming back. I know some of our Jewish friends and our African American friends were glad to see us back because those two groups themselves have suffered their own humility and disenfranchisement, so it was a welcome feeling.

TI: How about the faculty? Do you recall anything from your teachers about you coming back and...

EBA: I don't recall anything from them except that I was just a student here at Bailey Gatzert and the Japanese students were part of Bailey Gatzert before and will continue on to do so. I recall the students, all the faculty -- I mean, the faculty was, was tender toward us and welcoming.

TI: And how about life back at Japanese Baptist Church after that year when it was reopened? How did that feel and what was that like?

EBA: Again, it was a sense of coming home, coming back to security and what we've always known before and a sense of just continuing on again and picking up the pieces, putting everything back together as best we could and seeing what the next great adventure was going to be.

TI: Do you recall when the church reopened, any of your dad's sermons and did he talk about the return back to Seattle or what the Japanese had just gone through in any way?

EBA: Honestly, I don't have any recollection of any of his sermons in that regard.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.