Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Earl Hanson Interview
Narrator: Earl Hanson
Interviewer: David Neiwert
Location: Poulsbo, Washington
Date: May 27, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-hearl-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

DN: But, so the, the announcement in mid-March that they were being evacuated must have come as something of a shock.

EH: At first they thought it would be just the, the immigrants from Japan. The ones born in the States, they thought they were gonna stay home. And it didn't turn out that way. Now, Tom Kitayama was in our graduating class, and very, very good friend of mine. We were in boy scouts together. He was at Washington State, and he was out of the area, from...

DN: The exclusion zone?

EH: Yeah. Because I think the, the mountains was the dividing line. Somewheres in there. And, and so an American family took him in and kept him there until he graduated. He became -- now, I'm going to brag a little bit about the Japanese. He, he and his brother and his family went to... down in California. Union City? He became, got on the city council, he became mayor, and they named a school after him. The Tom Kitayama, whatever the school is. I've got it, I keep a, I have a box of all the, the stuff from the grads. And Sada Omoto, he went on to become a doctor, and, from Detroit, Michigan. What's the name of the school there? One of the big schools there, anyway. But he still lives back there, but he never, he always comes for our class reunions. And he was our class president when we graduated, and he's still our class president. We're proud of him.

DN: That, even though he didn't get to graduate with you, right?

EH: Oh, they all graduated. We were the last class to graduate prior to the war.

DN: Oh, you graduated in '40?

EH: Yeah.

DN: Oh, okay.

EH: And he, he was salutatorian, valedictorian. He was, boy, he was sharp. And now, all, all of us, we all graduated together, and -- [laughs] -- more or less went our ways from then on, you know.

DN: Uh-huh.

EH: But we, we would always get the -- our class, probably, is one of the few classes that gets together probably three or four times a year. [Laughs]

DN: Did, one of the things about the Bainbridge evacuation was that it was, they used the pretext that, of course, there was the danger that they could spy on the Bremerton naval station and that sort of thing, and could sabo-, conduct sabotage. And that was why a lot of the FBI agents came in right after Pearl Harbor and took away a number of the Issei who lived on Bainbridge. Did, do you think anybody realized at the time that what was happening on Bainbridge was actually a test run that was going to affect all the Japanese up and down the coast?

EH: Well, you know, it kind of came as a shock to all of us. And when they announced that, the soldiers moved on the Island, and they were patrolling all over, and I remember that one of the arterial stops, the army truck was parked there and I talked to this guy. And I, and one of the questions I asked him was what he felt about taking our guys away. He says, "I can't say anything because I'm in the service." So we told him, I says, "You're taking away our, some of our best friends." And then when I was, went down to the Eagledale dock to see 'em off, "Park, get up there. Up there." And Frank Kitamoto has a picture showing, and there's soldiers up in, up in the field up there, holding us people back up there.

DN: Pretty strong feelings?

EH: Why, everybody was crying, you know. Hey, that was a shock.

DN: Yeah, these were people you'd grown up with.

EH: Pardon?

DN: These were people you had grown up with.

EH: Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, you know, back before the war, you knew practically everybody on the Island. If you didn't know 'em personally, you knew 'em by name or by sight. And, and they were good people.

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