<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So you came back to Seattle, what did you do then?

EBA: Well, I worked my way through college and when, and my time at seminary, I worked for United Parcel Service, drove a truck. And so I did that for a while when I came back and, but I always had an interest in boats, as far back as I can remember, boats. Even remembering when my dad, when I was a child, my dad had purchased these plans to build a rowboat. And I was so excited, we were gonna build this rowboat. Well, it never came to pass, we never even started. But I've always had an interest in boats, so I went back to Seattle Central Community College and entered their marine carpentry program. And I was attending the Gompers branch, Samuel Gompers branch up on Twenty-third and Jackson. And so I just started building boats, went, got --

TI: Is that the same place where the old Washington Middle School, Washington Junior High School, or close by, wasn't it?

EBA: It's close by, yeah, yeah.

TI: Nearby, okay.

EBA: But I started working in boatyards, building boats and I loved working with my hands and crafting, you know, the things. I was more of a finish carpenter than, than anything else, but it was a, it was a grand time of just engaging in what I thought I wanted to do.

TI: Okay, and so this was like late '60s, early '70s?

EBA: Yes, yes, late '60s, early '70s, into the late '70s. Yeah.

TI: I'm curious, in terms of during this period, from the late '60s, things like the Civil Rights movement and things like that, and given your sort of experiences with the Japanese American community through the war and then growing up, how you thought about the Civil Rights movement or what your, did you, what you were thinking during this period?

EBA: Well, I wasn't a demonstrator but my thoughts and my feelings were very much in the Civil Rights movement because it brought back memories of the Japanese incarceration and the loss of civil rights for them. And so I was very much intellectually for the Civil Rights movement at that time. I wasn't a demonstrator, but certainly went along with the civil rights rhetoric.

TI: Did you, during this period, ever stay in touch with your old Bailey Gatzert friends?

EBA: I had friends... yes, I had friends that we'd come through the school system with and these were friends mainly that were in Japanese Baptist Church. And although we had a larger community of friends, just in the community itself, in the central area community, and, in fact we still, on occasion, every once in a while get together and talk over old times and, or it's somebody's fiftieth birthday or sixtieth birthday or something like that and we just rehash it. And Yosh Nakagawa has been a real instigator in some of that stuff, too, 'cause he was my basketball coach when we were in the church basketball league. And he's a good one to rally the troops periodically.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.