<Begin Segment 5>

BN: You were there for about three years, and do you know why your parents chose to go to where they went to?

BS: Yeah. My dad looked into that, and he learned that the Japanese Americans living in Spokane, in that area, had never been interned because they were just outside the military zone. And so he figured that must be a good place, or a place welcoming to Japanese Americans. Though they didn't know how discriminatory they actually were, but that was the reason they decided to go there. And he couldn't get his job back on the railroad, so he decided he would try his hand at farming. He had never farmed in his life, but there was this guy that owned this piece of property in this rural community called Otis Orchards, which was about fifteen miles east of Spokane. And the owner of that land was also the owner of the Nash auto dealership in Spokane, that brand doesn't even exist anymore. But he leased the land to my dad, and my dad was basically a (tenant) farmer. And he farmed that land for several years, even though it was (very gravelly soil and) totally unsuited to the truck farming that he was doing. (...) (Anyway), that's why we decided to live in that area. (It) was a very small rural community, probably just a couple of thousand people lived there, and used to be mainly apple orchards. But that's where he decided he would take us.

I remember taking the train from the Minidoka camp, actually, Twin Falls was the nearest city, to Spokane. And when we entered the train, passenger train, we found that all the seats were taken. My mom was, at that time, several months pregnant, but no one would give us a seat. So the conductor told us we had to (stand) on the platform between the cars, and it was open to the air. And that was when they had coal driven locomotives, and the smoke would come down. By the time we ended up in Spokane, we were all covered with soot because no one would give us a seat inside the car. I remember that very distinctly.

BN: When you left, you were about nine?

BS: Yeah, I was six plus three, so yeah.

BN: Were there other Japanese American families in the area?

BS: There was only one other Japanese American family in that small community, and they moved back to California after a couple of years there. So by that time we were the only Japanese American family in that whole community. In fact, we were probably the only minorities in that community.

BN: How was the reception? How did you get along with your neighbors and the people in that community?

BS: Well, they treated us reasonably well most of the time. But I was getting into fights a lot (at school); because I would get hassled for being Japanese. It was kind of a tough time, at least during the first several years. When I entered the fourth grade, there were about twenty students in that fourth grade, and almost all twenty of us were in class together up until we graduated in the twelfth grade. So it was like one big family.

BN: Did you make close friends?

BS: Not close friends, but some friends. I was near the top of my class in all those classes, so they had to respect that. I ended up being elected class president and then president of the entire senior high school. And I often became very involved in athletics, so that gave me a lot of respect from the other students.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.