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TI: You know, something else that you were doing, some of the students, after they graduated from high school, wanted to go to college. Do you recall helping any of the students go to college or anything like that?

CH: I can imagine wanting to help them, but I'm not sure at that point how I should help them, because I wasn't, I didn't know much about what, what a college education could do for you. I think I went into it quite blind and just assumed that if I had an idea it was good one. Not sure.

TI: It's kind of interesting because in your book you said almost a very similar thing, that you didn't feel like you were in any way an expert about college or how to prepare for college or even go to college, but yet these, and you mentioned primarily girls, would come to you to get advice because they didn't even know how to take a train, or if they were going to go back East and had to go through Chicago, how would they even make a transfer in Chicago? So these were all stories or, or information that they looked to you to get. And you talked about even getting friends and family in Chicago to help some of these girls as they would make their way.

CH: Yes, I think I have a faint memory of that, and I'd just refer the person to, it'd probably be the name of my mother and father in Chicago, and depend on my parents to pick up the pieces, but, and I think they did help in many ways. But I wasn't there, so I can't report.

TI: No, that's good. And that's what you wrote in the book, how you would contact your parents and they would meet them at the train station, and if they had to stay overnight they would take care of them or if they had to make a transfer, if they needed food or even money, these were all things that you arranged for, again, primarily girls going to college, to places like Swarthmore, that you arranged for, contacted these colleges to help them get admitted and things like that.

CH: Well, sounds reasonable.

TI: Do you recall the town Parker very much? This was a small town outside of Poston where they would have things like stores, a theater, restaurants, I think a couple bars, that sometimes the staff would go there, the MPs would go there. Do you recall Parker very much?

CH: If I was talking to somebody who was familiar with it, some detail might come back. The name Parker registers as a town, but beyond that, no.

TI: Unfortunately, in your book you don't mention specific places so much, but you talked about the people and how some of them were not very tolerant of the Japanese, that some places had like a sign that wouldn't let Japanese come inside. That, I guess one story I remember, up at like the gas station, that they wouldn't, the gas station owner wouldn't even let Japanese get off the truck to get a bottle of soda or anything like that. They, they were pretty intolerant of the Japanese in Parker and I was wondering if you remember any of that.

CH: I think, I assume that people in Parker were not tolerant of the Japanese, but I couldn't prove it one way or the other from here.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.