<Begin Segment 8>

LT: Were there any consequences for you as a friend of Gordon's?

ED: I don't remember any. I was involved in the same groups he was involved in, so we knew the same people, and I felt like I was trying to get involved with a different group, so I can't say that I had any particularly unpleasant effects. The adults were supportive.

LT: Now the FBI, there was a consequence with the FBI because they called upon you at home, didn't they?

ED: Yes, they did. Two of them came out to the house.

LT: Can you talk about who came out, what they said --

ED: I have no idea what they said. I know what my mother and dad said, it was that they would be supportive of me, they would bring me to court if they needed to. I don't remember much more than that. What happened was that they were called to take me to court, but I was never asked anything. So it was unimportant.

LT: And why did the FBI initially ask you to testify, and why do you think they did?

ED: Or didn't? They didn't ask me in the long run.

LT: Okay. But why were they interested in your testimony early on?

ED: Oh, I think it was more a matter of their making sure they had down the names of everybody involved, and I was one of them. Maybe they felt that because I was a teenage girl, that I would be more interesting to the court, I don't know. (Narr. note: The FBI wanted my statement that Gordy had me out after curfew.)

LT: Were you worried at all?

ED: What?

LT: Were you worried about your testimony?

ED: No. We talked about it, and I had a clear idea of what I was going to say, and that was that. It was very brief. It was disappointing it was so brief. [Laughs] I didn't have a chance to say as much as I might have.

LT: Do you remember any questions that they asked you?

ED: I don't recall that there were. There may have been that I'm just not remembering.

LT: Well, as a follow-up then, you and your parents attended Gordon's trial, and it was the Federal District Court of Seattle on October 20, 1942. And as you said, you were prepared to testify...

ED: What?

LT: You were prepared to testify, they just didn't call you forward.

ED: No, they didn't think it was a good idea, probably. They didn't want to give a friend of Gordy's too much time, one aspect. I think they felt that they had material that I would produce already in their papers. Because at some point, what Gordy had to say or do was already in the papers. Gordy took a bunch of papers down to the court before the hearing, and they said, "Oh, we already have that." And so what was the point of saying it anymore? [Laughs] And all you could conclude from that was that somebody had been taking papers from the files and giving them to the FBI. Hate to think about who it was, but I think that's the only thing you can conclude. But I remember when the Quaker gentleman who was helping Gordy said, "We have this paper statement of yours, why don't we take it down and give it to the FBI?" So they did, and there was the old answer, "We already have those papers." [Laughs] So there was no point to that.

LT: And Gordon had become a Quaker of November of 1941, a month before Pearl Harbor was bombed.

ED: I don't know, I didn't know when it was. Well, that's interesting.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2014 Densho. All Rights Reserved.