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TI: Now when things started... so you felt you're 145 miles off the coast, but they're talking about removing people from the coast.

MS: The coast.

TI: What did your sister and brother-in-law do?

MS: They came back to the valley, and they lived with us for a while.

TI: So, and they were thinking, well, this would be...

MS: Safer.

TI: A safer place to be.

MS: And they probably wouldn't have to evacuate.

TI: When they started removing people from places like Bainbridge Island, so talk about that. What did you know about that?

MS: Didn't know much about it. Didn't know.. just that that they're being evacuated, but we felt safe. And that we thought it was terrible, but you felt helpless, but you did feel kind of a change in the atmosphere. The white folks seemed a little bit more cocky. And, but you went on your life and think, "We're going to be safe and things are going to be different," but you don't know how different. And it was a shock when you found out that we were being evacuated. As we learned later, it was like the granges and so forth that insisted on getting us evacuated, even though it really not in the plans to begin with, and that became a shock. And then to begin to have to get rid of things and how we're going to take care of things and so forth. And we had friends that offered to store some things, but they couldn't store everything. And you think back on some of the things I remember, is we had some furniture. Now it would be a tremendous antique, but we had to get rid of those. And how I had heard that people were coming and buying things for practically nothing. But we didn't see that much in the valley. We did get rid of our things, but it was very difficult.

TI: Do you recall about what time or date it was when the Wapato, Yakima valley found out that they also had to leave?

MS: It must have been about March or so, because we left, I think, May or June.

TI: And it sounds like you said you thought that there was some political pressure to...

MS: Yes, because by this time, when we found out, people would come in and say, "We'll buy your crops, buy your lease." And some of 'em were pretty arrogant and rude. And Kara talks about that, about very rude and feeling that they just kind of came in with a swag and feeling that they're very important. But she took care of all this, and I look back, and Kara couldn't have been very much older.

TI: Because you're in Eastern Washington, so most of Eastern Washington wasn't removed. I mean, Yakima valley was...

MS: All of us, the whole valley, the 1,300 people, of us from Yakima to Toppenish.

TI: Yeah. 'Cause you would think, if you look at Washington state geography, I always thought, "Why didn't they just use the Cascade mountain range as..."

MS: They said the granges and some of these groups put a pressure on the government to get us removed. It was not originally planned that way.

TI: And the sense was because the Japanese were competitors to them, so that if they were removed...

MS: I think the same kind of pressures that went on in California, same groups.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.