<Begin Segment 14>

MA: You said that a lot of the Japanese Americans started coming over and settling in Spokane.

SO: (Yes).

MA: How was that? I mean, what was the relationship like between those two groups?

SO: Fine, we didn't (have any) problems. In fact, I made (many new) friends with... I was talking to Mas, we were talking about that last, yesterday when I was over there. He said, I asked him, "By the way, how many evacuees were here during the war? How much did the Japanese population grow here during the war?" He said, "Gosh, I'm not sure," he says, "it could have been up as high as five thousand," but that's a guess. I really don't know what -- I know there's quite a few, and quite a few of 'em are still living here, as far as that goes. But yeah, the population here was really, it (increased) all of a sudden after the war. I imagine there was between four and five thousand, just guessing.

MA: What were some effects of that sort of increase in population of the Nisei or Japanese population?

SO: I don't know. I made a lot of new friends, I didn't have any problem with them, yeah. In fact, I helped a couple people get out of camp by offering them a job.

MA: Oh, how did that work?

SO: Well, as long as I could, you could prove that they'd be self-supporting, and they weren't of bad character, see, they were letting them out. (...)

MA: Did, did they contact you, or did you contact the camp authorities? How did that connection...

SO: Well, my mother, I think she went to a couple camps as a visitor, with a visitors' permit, and she ran into a couple, three families there that wanted out, so we decided to help them get out.

MA: Why did your mother initially decide to visit the camps?

SO: Oh, just wanted to see what it was like, I guess. She had a chance to go down there. I think she went to the Minidoka, is the one she went to. But I can't remember, I'm trying to think of the names of the people. There's two or three families I know she helped, came out.

MA: Did she talk much about her, what she saw in the camps with you?

SO: No, no. Other than that, said there's a lot of people there, that's all she used to say.

MA: I see. So your mother visited the camp, and then made contact with a few families.

SO: Yeah, I guess they made friends during their visit there, and then they wrote to her and wanted to know if they could help out, so she said, "Yes," so we got 'em out. I can't remember the name, there's two or three families I used to know. But we did help a couple, three families.

MA: What did they do when they came over from --

SO: Like I say, we got 'em out. [Laughs] (...)

MA: I see. So it wasn't, like, explicitly sort of, like... it's not like you set up something with the camp administration.

SO: No, no, no, nothing like that.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.