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TI: Now, for you, pretty soon your family had to leave Samish Bay, because all the Japanese had to leave. So how did you, what did you do to get ready to leave?

EY: What we had left on the beds over in Samish Bay, we made arrangements with our neighbor, Rockpoint Oyster Company, and they harvested the oysters and paid us for the gallons that they had gotten. And so we didn't have anything to worry about that until we got back, and of course, the seed that we had, our friends were over on the island, over on Samish Island, whom my father had explained the procedure as to how to prepare and cultch for oyster seed. So they prepared themselves with the cultch material and prepared for summer spawning season. And at the same time, they said they would cultch for us, whatever strings we had prepared, and they will get the seed and plant the seed on their own ground, so that when we come back, we'll have some oysters to draw from.

TI: So from your story, your neighbors were very helpful. I mean, the Rockpoint Oyster Company harvested for you and then they paid you for it, and your neighbors were keeping seed for you. So they were really helpful during this time.

EY: So what?

TI: So they were very helpful to you and your family.

EY: Oh, yes. Yeah, everybody was very kind, you know. And they were not against us.

TI: So this is not always the case. When I've interviewed other farmers and other people, oftentimes their competitors would take advantage.

EY: That's right, they'd take advantage.

TI: But it didn't happen with your family.

EY: Well, I think it was the fact that my father was willing to explain to them what to do so that during our absence, they can still do things and maybe get some seed and get local seed and continue on.

TI: So when you had to leave, though, what happened to the restaurant, the house, and the beds? What happened to all that?

EY: One of our friends, Lorne Hower is one of the fellows that did a lot of oyster harvesting for a lot of the local people. The thing that my father did was he went to the streetcar drivers, and he said, "For retirement, buy some oyster land and plant some seed, then you'll have something for your retirement income." And so some of the people did that. And this fellow Lorne Hower, to whom he sold the restaurant building, he was doing some of that, too, for people. And when you do that, you know, they are dependent on each other. And so they have a very good friendly relationship, and so people don't try to hurt each other, they try to help each other. And so we had a fairly good relationship with people in the area. And so I don't think we had anybody that was trying to take advantage of us. But, you know, we were very fortunate, though, that the oysters, we didn't have very much oysters that we could get after the war.

TI: Okay, I'll get to that later, but let's talk about, now you had to leave Samish Bay. Where did the family have to go? Do you remember, I think you went to, like, Pinedale?

EY: Oh, no, we, from Samish Bay, the thing that happened was they had a train that started out around Lynden, the northern border. And the families around Lynden entrained there. And then the train went down to Bellingham and picked up people around Bellingham. And then from there, the train went down to Burlington. They picked those of us on the Chuckanut, around Burlington, Burlington had Japanese laundry, a photographer, and strawberry people, you know, there's a Sakuma strawberry, there was a Takagi photography, laundry, surprising how many there were. And then there was some, Ozaki down a ways had a dairy farm.

TI: And so at Burlington, how many Japanese were there waiting for the train?

EY: One, two, three... we went there, we boarded from Burlington, so one, two, three, four, five, maybe half a dozen families.

TI: So maybe about, what, maybe twenty, twenty-five people?

EY: I'm sure there were that many, yeah. There were the Shimadas, Ozaki, Takagi, Akita.

TI: And describe that day. Were there other people watching as you guys went on the train?

EY: Watching what?

TI: Yeah, watching the Japanese. Were there, like, other people, like white people watching? Or who else was at the train station? When you had to leave, describe that day. How many people were there, what was the mood and were people talking?

EY: You know, there was one restaurant that was pretty bad. But other than that, I don't know of any. My sister was a second or third grader, and she always talked about a Quaker girl who gave her a coloring book. And we gave her our dog and cat, and she always talked about that nice Quaker girl that gave her the coloring book. But I don't know of any other, no others. But, of course, dogs and cats, you know, they follow the master, until they just wandered off and disappeared.

TI: So the train picked you up at Burlington, where did it go next?

EY: Where did we go? We went directly to Tule Lake. We didn't go anyplace else, we went to Tule Lake.

TI: Oh, so most people went to Pinedale. So you went directly to Tule Lake. So Tule Lake was already...

EY: It was in June. We stayed home until June, and then we went directly to Tule Lake.

TI: So you were a later pickup then? June was, most people got picked up much earlier.

EY: Well, we were, so we were there for half a year.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.