Densho Digital Archive - George Morihiro Interview (denshovh-mgeorge

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MA: Did you yourself witness or experience any discrimination when you came home from the war?

GM: Well... other than people staring at you or something like that, no, I don't think I experienced discrimination where I could remember something that was bad, but I had to find a job. And before I even got started looking around, a friend of mine, an older fellow that was in my sister's class, Olaf Kvamme, he, I guess he worked in an employment office, and he found me a job at Fort Lewis.

MA: What was your job at Fort Lewis?

GM: I was working in the reception center as a, in the records department. And my job there was making all the forms for all the people that was coming in the army, all the forms so that they could get started in the army. Medical forms and all the insurance forms and everything like that. But that was a very low-paying job, it was civil service, but I think I, I think I made an annual pay of 2,300 dollars, I think it was, was my pay. Which was quite a bit in those days. It was enough to get you by, and I didn't have to stay at my sister's, I had a dormitory in Fort Lewis, sort of a private place that was not with the soldiers, but a private dorm up there.

MA: When you were working at Fort Lewis and doing that, what were your plans for your future or for the next ten years or so?

GM: Well, my future was actually for going to the University of Washington, and that's where the problem comes in. I told my, Jimmy, who I was staying with, that, "I plan on going to UW."

MA: This was your brother-in-law?

GM: Uh-huh. And he, he says, "You know, you gotta remember Ray Yamamoto," and I says, "Yeah." Ray Yamamoto, whose father inherited this big farm and was able to go to Stanford, and he came back and after graduating from Stanford, he couldn't find a job, and he landed back on the farm. And this is what my brother-in-law told me, that, "It could happen to you," because that's what happened to Japanese going to college and graduating in those days.

MA: So was your brother-in-law maybe discouraging you from going to university because of that?

GM: Well, not, not completely. That didn't discourage me, but I went to Fife High School and talked to my principal there, and I asked him to look up my grade and see if I could qualify for University of Washington. And I knew I wasn't the smartest kid in town, or even close to it, but I wanted to know if I was good enough to go to college. And he looked up my grades and he says, "Yeah, George," he says, "you can go to, get into University of Washington, barely." [Laughs] But he said, "This is a very surprising thing, because as I look at your record," he says, "you know, all the Japanese kids were very smart." [Laughs] Meaning I didn't have to... well, that's the kind of guy I was, you know. I wasn't out there to make records in school. But he says, "Your grades are good enough." And that might have discouraged me, but there's also one other thing that, to be an engineer. I was a little bit in a hurry, too. I looked around and decided that maybe I'll take something else. Might have been a mistake in my life.