<Begin Segment 29>

MA: Okay, so today is March 16, 2006, and we're here again at the Museum of Arts and Culture in Spokane. And I'm here with George Yamada. So thanks for coming back, George.

GY: Well, thank you for inviting me.

MA: So when we left off yesterday, you had just finished talking about your experience with the MIS, and I wanted to ask you when, when did you return to Spokane after the war?

GY: Oh, from Presidio I proceeded up to Fort Lewis. There I got my separation papers, that was May, June, July 13th of 1946. And I met up with several other people that took basic with me that were from Portland, and we met there anyway, with the idea to get separated from the military. That was Fort Lewis.

MA: And from Fort Lewis did you return back home?

GY: I came back to Spokane, uh-huh.

MA: How had Spokane changed during the war? I mean, you were gone for three years...

GY: Actually, that, well, it changed quite a bit. We have an influx of evacuees that came into town, many of them went back to Portland and to Seattle. However, we did have a contingent of evacuees that made it their home permanently, so to speak, in Spokane. And it, I think the local people, people like myself, could recognize the evacuees. We got to know one another, of course, and many came from Manzanar, one or two came from Tule, lot of 'em came from Heart Mountain and Minidoka. Not too, not any from Topaz.

MA: Why did so many of them settle in Spokane, do you know?

GY: Primarily job opportunities, I believe. We had electronics firm, Hewlett-Packard, couple other ones that located in Cheney, Eastern Washington University is located there. I think the job opportunities that came up.

MA: And how did these Niseis, how did they fit in with the Japanese American community in Spokane, the sort of prewar community? How did they fit in?

GY: Yeah, fit in real well, I thought. Many people started attending the Protestant Church, a few of them were Buddhist, and we had already established a Buddhist Temple. I think primarily we had Kaiser here, and eventually... no, I guess the aerospace, the Boeing, offshoot from Boeing on the west plains started up, but that was much later years. And opportunity here for business, work, was, I thought, real well. We have several lawyers, a lot of doctors, MDs, and I read about name, Japanese names in the newspaper or other business journals where I don't recognize the Japanese name, so I would assume they came in from wherever to pursue their professional goals or could be nurses, doctors. I have no idea, but you know, they are mentioned in the newspapers.

MA: So aside from the new sort of Niseis coming into Spokane, how did you notice the changes in the, sort of, preexisting Japanese American community during the war? Were there any major changes that happened with, with your older community?

GY: Oh, I think with the job description, I don't know how they all got into, like, U.S. mail or, well, postal service, or even becoming a cop here in town. We have a Nisei police that transferred in from Canada, I believe, and his name was Yamada, and that was in the newspaper, also. I'd never seen that fellow, but I met up with his sergeant, buck sergeant cop at the doctor's office, and he mentioned was I related to that Yamada that was under his command. And we got to know one another, this hakujin cop.

MA: And then when you returned to Spokane, what was the housing situation like in terms of segregation or areas that, you know, the Japanese could or could not live?

GY: Well, once it was established that Orientals could buy real estate here in Spokane, anyway, I think it was in the mid-50s where this diver, Olympic diver, I thought his name was Kono. But anyway, he medaled in the Olympics as a diver, beautiful diver. He wanted to buy a house on the south, south side of Spokane, and he was, he was told they would not sell real estate to an Oriental above, I thought it was around Sixteenth Avenue. I'm not sure when that opened up, because I wasn't around, but I read in the paper subsequently that that was against the law, whatever law that mentioned, but it opened up. Kono did, I'm not sure if he ever did buy a house in Spokane, but that was a big row back in the '50s.

MA: So even after they had passed these laws forbidding segregation, it seems like there was still resistance.

GY: Oh, yes, oh, yes. It, it's, I'm not sure when that came into law, but when I was in real estate also, a number of years, I, we get to learn these various laws and we have that in our test, you know. You gotta know your laws, governing, buying and selling of real estate in the State of Washington.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.