<Begin Segment 29>

TI: I guess in... we're been here for now three hours. I just wanted to ask you, is there anything else that we haven't asked, or anything that you want to share in terms of either Tule Lake or Gridley after the war? Anything else?

JT: Well, the only thing I can say is, before the war, we were accepted as just another people. We were citizens, another citizen. And there was, as far as discrimination goes, there was none. After the war, or during the war, there was discrimination even in a small community like Gridley where you knew these people. They wouldn't talk to you, and you couldn't talk to them because they wouldn't, they wouldn't stand still. They'd move away. And then eventually, we became accepted again. We became friends again. I keep on saying "my so-called friends." They're not friends no more, they're just "so-called friends." They're friends for their convenience, or my convenience.

TI: So what would it take so that they would become your friends again and this wouldn't happen again in the future?

JT: I don't think they'll ever be my friends. No true friends. They're just... they knew me. If they didn't know me when I was growing up, that's one thing. But I grew up with their kids, I played with their kids, I visited their home when we were together and going to school. They came to my place, we learned, I tried to teach one guy how to swim, and the guy almost drowned. But he did actually learn how to swim eventually that day. But boy, we just had to chase him all over the place, and we caught him and we threw him in the ditch and we jumped in afterwards. But he did learn to swim that day. Things... they accept us now as good people again, somebody that they can depend on. If they ask us for donation, we usually donate. Like Gridley hospital was asking for donation. When they, when they created the hospital, they had a Thousand Dollar Club to get money to start the hospital, and it was about a twenty-bed hospital. So the community is only a little over three thousand at that time. And this is not just one town, it's Gridley, Live Oak, Biggs, and Richvale, three or four towns all together. And the reason that they chose Gridley was Gridley was the largest of the whole as far as all the other places combined. And the nearest hospital was Marysville or Chico. They had nothing in between. So this is why they started the hospital business. And my father donated a thousand dollars, and many other people donated to the Thousand Dollar Club, and we got the hospital going. Now, we're up to about a sixty-bed hospital. And I took a friend of mine that got hurt harvesting rice, and most hospitals, like Rideout Hospital is a much larger hospital. Rideout is in Marysville. It's a much larger hospital than Gridley. And they have to have the paperwork done before you do the patient. The administration side's got to get their things all done before you can see the doctor, even if it's an emergency. You could die before you... but Gridley hospital is the other way around. They would rather have the patient see the doctor, and then we'll do the paperwork. In Marysville, this one guy says, "I was there for six hours before I saw a doctor," and this was emergency. And so the Gridley hospital works different, it's closer-knit. And at one time, the Rideout group had bought Gridley hospital, and they were losing money. So they says, "Well, we're gonna close Gridley." Well, Gridley people didn't want 'em to close. And they needed something like a couple of million dollars to keep it open. Well, a small community like Gridley, Biggs, Live Oak and Richvale, we raised over two million dollars in about three weeks. You know, there's some well-to-do people, but not everybody's well-to-do in this community.

TI: So it sounded like you supported this effort, you believed in this hospital, you supported it. And again, so you have been a generous contributor to this community.

JT: Well, so now, we're being accepted as somebody that you can depend on. If you ask for help, you know...

TI: But the interesting thing is, your father did the same thing decades and decades ago, too.

JT: Yeah.

TI: And even before the war, he probably...

JT: Well, see, my father has great respect for the President of the United States, regardless of who it is. And when President Roosevelt signed the proclamation order 9066, my father says, "You know, it's not being right, it's not being wrong. But this is the top man at the United States, the head of the United States. He wants us to go to concentration camp, he wants to go to assembly center. And in my father's view, it's not being right or it's not being wrong. It's what the President wants. We should do what the President wants us to do." And I'm second generation, and we listen to our parents probably a lot more than my kids listen to me. And I know that we went along with my father's wish, that we should do what the President wants us to do. But my kids, they says they're not going. I know they would say that: "We're not going."

BT: Well, they're following their father's example, right? [Laughs]

JT: I could talk to 'em, says, "You know, you've got to do what the President wants us to do." They says, "Baloney." They're not going to do it. They would challenge that. And I think the second, third, fourth generation would do the same thing.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.