<Begin Segment 21>

MA: At that point, so you'd arrived in Pinedale, did you have any communication with your father, who was at that point in Missoula?

KB: We were getting letters from him, they were censored. I had one that my sister wrote to him that we got back, and we had all these stamps, "censored" and "approved." She has, my sister in California, I gave it to her. Also, I don't remember if I told you that before we left Seattle, I was called to the FBI office. And I met with a FBI agent. This was maybe, like, maybe in the spring of '42, and he handed me all the books that they had taken from our house. It was a very friendly FBI agent, asked me how we were getting along, I told him we were having a terrible time without my father, and he had six young children and so forth. He was very sympathetic, and what I heard later was that he spoke in favor of releasing my father from camp, from the camp in Missoula, Montana. So maybe there were some second thoughts about what they had done to us.

MA: So the FBI had called you specifically to return these materials, and then asked a little bit about how you were doing.

KB: Yeah. And one of my neighbors went to Missoula to testify in favor of his father who was also in this camp, and he's the one who told me how this FBI agent spoke favorably in my father's case.

MA: And your father was eventually released, right? To Pinedale.

KB: Yeah, he was released in July to Pinedale. One of my neighbors came to tell me that my father was at the gate, and I remember running all the way down there from our barrack, which was over, not too close to the gate to meet him. It was just really a happy point in my life, to see him come back.

MA: After he came back, did he talk at all about what happened to him and his time in Missoula?

KB: Yeah, apparently they, they weren't treated too badly. What the main activity was to polish rocks. I don't know whether you heard how Montana has some beautiful agates, and so his suitcase had all these rocks in it. [Laughs] And they were really beautiful. They were all different colors, and I think we somehow lost them over the years, some of the, my brothers and sisters probably took some, but I know they were in my mother's house in Spokane for quite a while. And then when we closed her house, we just couldn't find them anymore, so I don't know what happened to them. But I know that that was one of the big activities, polishing rocks. And I think they also played go and shogi and cards and whatever to pass the time away. I don't think they were treated badly.

MA: So he didn't, he didn't return sort of with... I mean, I guess, what was his, sort of, emotional state at that point? I'm sure he was happy to be home --

KB: Oh, yes, very happy.

MA: -- or back with his family.

KB: Right. And I think he had lost weight, so I don't know about how they were fed, how they were really treated in that way, but yeah, he was very happy to be back.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.