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MA: So in your, in your neighborhood and with your hotel and all that, it seems like there was a lot of interaction among the Japanese Americans and the Caucasians. Did you ever witness, like, any types of discrimination or racism?

GY: Oh, yeah, you bet.

MA: What sorts of things did you see?

GY: During, prior to the war, I recall after YMCA, which was located downtown at that time, going into a coffee shop for whatever it was, a Coke or coffee. And I noticed a sign above says, "No colored." "No colored people allowed." And I walked in there and they didn't throw me out, which was kind of a surprise to me.

MA: Why were you surprised? Did you expect them to --

GY: Well, I figured if they were that haiseki, haiseki, you know, about the Negroes, the colored people, what's to hold them back in reference to Japanese or Chinese or any other ethnic group? But not a word was said, and he served me. I had my Coke or coffee or whatever, and then I went out to eat at a nice, nice steakhouse out in the valley, edge of the valley. And there was a sign there that said, "No colored allowed." And I went in there with my date, and no problem. Even in my basic training in Alabama, we got onto a bus down there, bunch of us, we were all Japanese. Got onto a bus, and the bus driver says, "You guys can't go back there, that's for the colored people." And I don't know about the Niseis, but we had a bunch of Hawaiians there, and Hawaiians are very loose. And they just sat back there and the bus driver couldn't do anything. But insofar as discrimination went in Spokane, it was underlying; it was there, strong there.

MA: You mean discrimination against Japanese? Anti-Japanese?

GY: Well, yeah. Anti-Japanese. You could just kind of feel it.

MA: What would be a situation where you could kind of feel that?

GY: Well, in high school as I remember, the feelings were felt. A couple of the guys just, you knew that they, "Hey, you bombed Pearl Harbor," and I would assume they, they had that ill-feelings toward the Japanese. I had also good friends, real good friends that came to our aid, so to speak, when Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. But I do know of several Caucasian friends that I lost because of my race.

MA: How did you feel about that, after you lost those friends?

GY: I just ignored them. I mean, if that's the way they felt, it didn't bother me. To heck with them; I just ignored them. Didn't talk to them, and they wouldn't have talked to me anyway as far as that went. But primarily, I think this was felt throughout the community, not only in Spokane, but throughout the United States. Where the FBI -- my dad, in order to get to his mail job at Great Northern Railroad, had to go under the United Union Pacific, the Milwaukee Railroad tracks. And it was railroad track that came right through into Spokane. Great Northern was a block north of that station, Union Pacific, but Union Pacific was all on girders. And they came in, you had to walk up to the railroad station, and underneath, we had to walk through to get to the employment, railroad. And the FBI says, "No, you can't do that. You can't be caught walking under a bridge, we're afraid you might bomb it." And so they fired every one of the Japanese, and there were a couple of Italians working there, Felice and Mancheny, Clark, were working there. And they couldn't handle, even with the new, whoever they hired for the mail, the mail was all screwed up, it was going all over the country instead of to the right destination. So after, I think, thirty days, they had to rehire all the Japanese again, so the mail started to run in the direction they were supposed to be going.

MA: I see. So they fired, initially fired all the Japanese laborers, but then stuff started going wrong, and they couldn't run the mail center?

GY: Yeah. At that time, I had a bid job, I had pretty good seniority from 1937. I was just a young teenager, but I received my social security through the Railroad Act, and I worked alongside the Isseis in the mail. We were considered laborers. And I became a mail handler, a bid job, being able to handle pouches and mailbags and send them to their destination.

MA: Was this while you were going to high school?

GY: Uh-huh. And I even got a job driving a car to post what trains were coming through Spokane: freight, passenger. And I got the job, but they found out I was Japanese, and, "Hey, you can't have a Japanese delivering train schedules." They were afraid the Japanese would bomb or whatever these railroad and freight, freight cars loaded with war goods. I've seen tanks going through Spokane, you know, army tanks.

MA: So you felt that yourself.

GY: Oh yeah. I was fired immediately, on the spot. They found out I was Yamada, Japanese, and I couldn't have that kind of sensitive job delivering. I used to have to go into Hillyard Station and post arrival of a freight train coming through Spokane and that. And it was a job that was a good job, but they fired me on that.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.