<Begin Segment 21>

TI: And when, so when you got back to Seattle, and say, the Buddhist Church, the Betsuin, how had that changed in terms of the membership? I mean, when you came back and they had a service, did it look pretty much the same as before the war, or what had changed?

SI: I think there were pretty substantial changes. Many of the Issei that were members prior to the evacuation no longer was there. They've moved elsewhere, or they've either died or they moved elsewhere. They never came back to Seattle. Then there were others that were new people that decided to come to Seattle who lived elsewhere before the war. I think the composition of the temple has changed, but there were still a fairly hard core of membership that came back that was able to take it up without too much trouble, I guess. The big question for the temple was to pay off the mortgage on the building, and that was a substantial amount of money that had to be raised from members who were, you know, in camp, who had no source of income, who came back to Seattle where they had no business, nothing to fall back on. I remember they had, the finance group had to really go out aggressively asking for donations to try to raise the money to pay off the mortgage for the temple.

TI: Would you say the group was smaller than before the war? When you say, you mentioned the composition changing, some didn't return but new members...

SI: I don't have an exact head count on that. I don't know what the head count was before the war. But I think the numbers of members after the war grew substantially. Where at one time, there were four hundred members in the Fujinkai. That's a lot of people, you know.

TI: So the peak, the peak size up to now has been, was more of a postwar phenomenon.

SI: The size increased after the war, yes. And then like they had two shifts of Sunday school, because they couldn't possibly get everybody into the, all the kids into chapel at the same time.

TI: Did you notice that -- so I'm thinking, just in terms of demographics, the increase, so a lot of Niseis were part of the membership of the Betsuin, and that increased with their children. Do you think that was the cause of the... 'cause you mentioned Sunday school doing two shifts, so it seems like more Sanseis were there. Is that how you would characterize it? Or are you thinking of, there were new memberships, new people joining the temple? I'm trying to get a sense of where that increase came from.

SI: Yeah, I don't know the exact reasons, but I feel that one thing's for certain, the church was, in a sense, a community center, being they had a big gym where people could get together for different types of functions. And we had a court that you could play basketball on, which drew the younger people. We had different types of socials and craft clubs that helped to bring people to the church.

TI: So in terms of challenges for the temple, you mentioned the financial challenge of paying off the mortgage. Were there any other challenges that faced the temple during these postwar years?

SI: I think one of the biggest challenges is trying to find an English-speaking minister. They knew that, the church leaders knew that in order for a religion to spread, they have to have an English-speaking minister that could talk the language of the members, the young members. That was one of the big challenges.

TI: I'm guessing that must have been a challenge for, perhaps, all the Buddhist churches on the West Coast. Demographically, they probably all wanted...

SI: Yes, definitely, it is for all temples, churches.

TI: And so where did the BCA or Buddhist Churches of America find English-speaking Buddhist ministers?

SI: The first ones that came over were ministers that were actually English-speaking members that went over as young ministers to Japan and they were trained in Japan. And they received their training in Japan and returned to this country after the war. And they were the first English-speaking ministers. There were also a few Caucasian members, ministers, who served the temple. One person, in fact, I know this Reverend Sunya Pratt of Tacoma that used to come and give sermons to the English-speaking congregation. But she was also a member from Tacoma prior to World War II. She used to come to Seattle to talk to English-speaking members. The others that I could remember were possibly some of the lay leaders that assumed leadership roles to try to give talks on Buddhism. They were probably former Sunday school teachers that continued on to become leaders for discussion groups.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.