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TI: Can you give me an example of maybe a story that he told about maybe one of his Japanese players or the culture, maybe a food? Can you recall anything that he would do...

DB: Well, there were so many of them that he... Marietta, you got any?

MG: I'm trying to think. Like you say, there's so many.

TI: Like earlier you mentioned Shobo. Or maybe the way they played the game, was that different?

DB: Well, these kids were all, as we would say now, height disadvantaged, or height challenged. So they had to really play, play the game, in those days, weave in the back of the court, the weave, and you could run out the clock. And so that was a drill that they did over and over again. (...) He was very upset, like I say, I was... when the relocation thing came about, I, of course, '37, this is '42, but I just know it was a grim time. It was a tense time, and then looking back on it. So he was... 'cause he was an emotional guy, not outwardly, but you could tell something was wrong with him. So he was truly upset with this whole process and the legislation, and he mumbled things about, "These are the best Americans and there's no criminal record," 'cause he was interviewed by secret service on all the kids later that joined the 442nd and other special services. And they never had, no one had a police record. But I can remember then going down early on to Puyallup.

TI: So let me, for the people who are going to watch this, so the Japanese were removed from Seattle, sent down to the Puyallup Fairgrounds, so they were there behind barbed wires.

MG: But one of the things that I remember him telling us is they were at Collins first. They came with their suitcases in the gym at Collins and waited for the buses to take them to Puyallup. It really hit him.

TI: Oh, it was probably one of the kind of places where they assembled for the buses to pick them up.

DB: Right, a collection center. So I can remember going down there, he had a '41 Chevrolet. Everybody had, before the war started, the car that you had was the car that you kept 'til much later. And he had a '41 Chevy.

TI: So a relatively new car.

DB: Well, it was, they were frugal, and they probably bought it for seventy-five dollars. But you know, it was a '41 Chev but we drove it and patched it and got it though the war and a little beyond. But I can remember going down -- this is my own personal reflection as a five year old kid -- I can remember going to Puyallup. Probably recognized it a fairground, because we'd been to the fair maybe once before. And this incredibly austere and imposing barbed wire fences with the wire rolls on the top, and all these kids that I knew from before at Collins, they're on the inside of this fence, and I didn't know how to interpret that. I mean, I didn't know what was going on. But I then remember my dad going to the back of the car, opening up the car, and emptying basketballs, baseballs, catcher's mitts, catcher's masks, stuff that we said, expropriated from the Seattle Parks Department, or better yet, stolen from Seattle or anyplace else they could... so these kids went off to camp with Seattle Parks Department gear. And that one book that I showed you that I picked out at the camp down in California, Manzanar (...) -- I'm sure that's a Seattle kid -- talking about that sports equipment carried him through and the whole thing. But those were tough times for Dad, and tough times for the Japanese community, certainly. But I would guess he took that as hard as any white man (...) in the city.

TI: Do you recall anything that he might have said during that time when he was either handing out the equipment?

DB: Well, not at that time, but he was just so upset about the whole thing, I don't think he was too verbal. But at home, he would just... 'cause he could go off, he could rant. I mean, he's a talker, better than me, even. But he would rant about these kids, saying they were good kids, their families were good, there was never a crime situation, this is a political hatchet job. He just never accepted any part of that. And then he said, as he said later on, when the secret service would come to Collins because somebody...

TI: So these were the men, I guess, that he maybe coached that were trying to join the army.

DB: Well, that's right. They had the opportunity, as you know better than I do, to join up...

TI: And so probably not secret service, maybe FBI?

DB: Well, it was FBI, governmental check, whether it was FBI or secret service. But some of them, as you know, I don't know individually, but some of them became interpreters.

TI: So some of them served in the Pacific.

DB: So they had to have higher clearance. But basically there was a lot of them. Because this (...)... probably the only other person in the community that these kids had contact with -- I mean, they had schoolteachers, certainly, but there was the family, of course they were in Idaho. (...) But in Seattle, and the reference point was Dad. There may have been others, but it was consistently Dad. And I think each one of these kind of upset him more because here these (men) were volunteering to get into the army to prove that they're American, just was a bummer deal for him.

TI: Now, was your father... I mean, your father coached hundreds and hundreds of kids. Was it difficult for him to remember as the FBI would come with probably a file and ask about a name?

DB: No, he didn't. He had a penchant for names. Many years later, in 1970 about, he has a retirement party where he is honored once by the Chinese community and all the kids that played, and once from the Japanese community. He stands there in the reception line with my mother, and we'd see Ashidas and Ikedas and Nakamuras and their wives, sometimes an American wife, Japanese American wife, Japanese wife, whatever it happened to be. But none of these women had ever heard, or didn't hear commonly the native name. He would introduce these people to my mother and, of course, the first time to their original name. And he talked about these (and said) some of the (men), they forgot their native name. They were always "Jack," or they were always that, but he said he'd never miss. So for a guy to remember that over forty years.

TI: Especially those, all those Japanese names, some of them would be hard to remember if you're not Japanese.

DB: Oh, yeah. I think he was good with languages.

TI: How about nicknames? I mean the Japanese Americans had a lot of nicknames.

DB: Yeah, and they did, you know 'em better than I do, but he was familiar with them, he could call them nicknames. But they were the Collins kids (...)... he went on, as I said earlier, because he had, for his own career and retirement plan, (...) and took a rating and then got moved up. But they moved him out, I think, kind of out of spite, actually, moved him out of the central city. But he was off the job, he was off the gym floor, which I think hurt him in terms of his physical health, 'cause he started putting on weight. But I think it hurt him emotionally, was never quite connected with the community. He was down in Rainier, he had a lot friends down there, old and new, but he never connected like he was here (at Collins).

MG: He wasn't responsible for one field house either, he traveled.

TI: Oh, so he was kind of like for the region...

DB: Setting up schedules and tournaments and stuff like that.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.