Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Roy Ebihara Interview
Narrator: Roy Ebihara
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Denver, Colorado
Date: July 5, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-eroy-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

RE: And us kids would play stickball in the summer days, but nothing ever occurred in the afternoon. It'd be blazing, blazing hot in the Southwest like that. So most of our activities, playing marbles, whether playing baseball and all that took place in the morning hours. They had a little, the menfolks built a little worship thing for the Buddhists. It was, it was teeny-tiny, I don't think it was one, less than one-half of this little room here. But nonetheless, they always had, we were Christians so we didn't, we didn't pray in there, but the whole thing was that they had a... I'm sure there was a, I mean, there was a picture with a curtain over it so you couldn't see the, what was behind the... and we were told never, never to sneak a peek in there. But, you know, one hot summer day we played baseball, and I was laying on my back, and I was looking towards that wall that had the pictures, so I crawled on my back all the way. And lo and behold, I can see there was a man on a white horse. So I went home that night and told my dad that, "I know what's behind the picture." [Laughs] At which point, my father yanked me out of the dinner table, spanked me so hard, I just cried. And I had no understanding of why he would do this, but later years, I found out that was the Emperor Hirohito on the white horse, and you're not supposed to lay eyes on him. In a picture?

TI: But, so for certain, like the emperor's birthday or something, they would, they would open the curtain for that.

RE: I would imagine. I don't recall, 'cause I was never inside that church other than to just feel the cool breeze coming from one end of the church to the other.

TI: And so in that, in that room or that building, so it's, that's where they did the, the Buddhists met in that space.

RE: Uh-huh, they burned incense and all kinds of stuff.

TI: Did, was there ever like a Buddhist, like, minister or something that would visit Clovis? Or how did --

RE: I don't recall.

TI: -- they conduct services?

RE: I, we were never, paid attention to what went on, because the times they would have services, we'd be in the Baptist church.

TI: How was, were there, like, Japanese entertainment? Did you ever have people who would come through town and, like, maybe show a Japanese movie?

RE: Oh, yeah. Yeah, we had that. Mr. Kimura handled all of that, too. So they used to have a movie projector, and it was boring because it was, I had, we had no connection to, as kids, to all those horrible Japanese love stories or whatever it was.

TI: And so what kind of movies did you like back then? Did you go to the other movie theaters?

RE: Yeah, we went to the town movie house.

TI: Now, at the movie house inside town, did you have to sit in different places from the white?

RE: No.

TI: So that was, that was...

RE: But only in the church, we had to be in the right side, the last two pews on the right side. We were segregated in the church, yeah.

TI: And so other than your family, the Japanese family, were there, like, blacks in the church? Was it all white?

RE: All white and us, just us. The blacks were segregated out, they were not allowed to be in the Baptist church, or they didn't join.

TI: Any other memories of Clovis?

RE: Yeah, there was a lot of little things, but it doesn't come to mind right now.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.