<Begin Segment 27>

DN: If you were to talk to a group of young people, say fifth, sixth graders, something like that, and try to impart to them your life lessons out of what you saw happen to your friends and neighbors, what would you say? What would you tell them?

EH: Funny you ask that, because just last fall, I was invited to be on a panel at the Sakai School on Bainbridge. And it was for the sixth graders, and that's all we talked about, was the Japanese. And that's where -- excuse me -- I found out that there were four families that were at Moses Lake when I was at Ephrata. I thought there was only one family. But the kids... oh, and all the kids wrote me letters, the teacher, the principal wrote letters back to me thanking me for doing, doing this. And the kids asked the questions, and there was Harold Champness, myself, Jerry Nakata, a young fellow who lives on the Island, but he, he went to Manzanar, but he was out of San Francisco someplace down there. And the fellow that owns Bainbridge Gardens now. I think there was six of us on this panel. And then the sixth graders all sat around, they had all written questions, and they could ask you, me, whatever, and if they asked, why then we gave them our remarks. And one of 'em asked about my feeling, and I told him that story about meeting the Koba boys in Ephrata. And I didn't repeat what was said on the bus, but -- in so many words, I put it to 'em that they knew it was derogatory.

DN: Did --

EH: And I've been asked to come back again next year.

DN: [Laughs] Did, what, what kind of... other than talk-, have you thought about it philosophically, about the meaning of what happened? Have you thought about it in terms of, if you were to tell these sixth graders how they should deal with people, what would you tell them?

EH: Well, Jerry would always say, he says, "I'm nothing but a Jap." I says, "Jerry, I don't want to hear that." I says, "You're just as 'white' as I am, and the rest of us. And you remember that." And I've told it in front of a lot -- and I told those kids over there, too, that. And they appreciated it. But you know, that's the way you feel.

DN: Right.

EH: The color of the skin has nothing to do with it. You know?

DN: Right.

EH: It's [pounds chest] from within. And I think that -- our whole class, we had six Japanese boys, and two Japanese girls in our class. And hey, they're always welcome. And we see 'em -- [pantomimes a hug] -- hey, all the girls, when Jerry comes, they give him a big hug. [Laughs]

DN: Something that... children don't seem to be born that way, and if you put 'em in an environment like what you had as a child, they just naturally get along. It's almost as though bigotry is something that's taught, maybe by elders, maybe by other people. Do you have any thoughts about that?

EH: Well, now, you met my grandsons.

DN: Okay.

EH: Okay, they are interested in... Jerry is the apple of their eye. They see him down in the store, they go up, and you know, Jeffrey, the youngest one, he's husky, and he gets, he just about squeezes Jerry. [Laughs] And Jerry says, "Boy, that grandson of yours, he, he came after me again." But Jerry works with an Okinawan girl at the Central Market over there. And I go down, I call, I call her my "Okinawan sweetheart." She's, she's just as sweet as can be, and she worked at Kadena airfield on Okinawa. She was born in Naha, and worked at the airfield, I think in the hotel or whatever it was. She was a boss of some sort, and then she married this kid from Bainbridge, moved to Bainbridge, and then they divorced and she's working over there at Central Market. She goes back about once a year to visit her parents and her grandmother. And like her grandmother says, she, she has no animosity against the Americans. She was actually saying it was nice that we came there. Although there were a lot of Okinawans that got killed, but that was war.

DN: Yeah. Well, I think that about covers the bases for us. [Laughs]

EH: I never dreamed it'd be anything like this.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.