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TI: So what I want to now just talk about is more now your life, and your memories of growing up in Winters. In particular, I think I saw in one of your slideshows, your slidestack, and it appears that right after the war ended, Winters wasn't a very welcoming place for Japanese, that there was a very anti-Japanese sentiment there. And this is the area you're growing up in, so I just wanted to, first, was that something you had to deal with growing up? Was there racism?

FS: Well, I was born in 1948, so during that period, there still was a lot of hostility. But by the time I went to school, like kindergarten, it was like 1953 or so, people had calmed down a lot and things were okay for me. Plus the fact that my parents never really talked much about all the bad times in camp and everything, so they were operating under the traditional Nisei view, is that that's the best way to raise the next generation without burdening them with all these bad memories. But that period that you're talking about, the initial resettlement period, that was when Shigeru's tombstone was knocked down. And like even Winters, on VJ Day in Winters -- and this was true all over the place -- the people, there was this big euphoric celebration that people had. And even in little Winters, people often went down to Main Street and they danced in the streets, they were so happy. But then that night, in Section 4 where all the old Japanese buildings were, it all burned down. And so in the little newspaper articles they wrote about it, they reported that there was a fire in that area and things were burnt. But they said they never could find out, knew what the origins of the fire was, and that was it. And in hindsight, I'm thinking, well, there's a big celebration there, and it's nighttime, and they have this big fire. It's incomprehensible to me that no one would know who those guys or girls were who set the fire. I think half the town was probably down there celebrating.

TI: And burning the place down.

FS: Yeah. [Laughs] So I don't know if there was any... well, there probably was some hostile intent to it, but in terms of sending a little message about whether you're going to be welcome or not, I mean, the first people who got back said, "What's it like?" and they said, "We're not welcome here."

TI: Did your dad ever talk about that?

FS: No, he never talked about that, and I didn't learn about that until actually only five or six years ago. Nobody in Winters talks about it either.

TI: How about your mother? You said she passed away a couple years ago, so she was alive at the end, when you found out about this. Did you ever ask her about that?

FS: No, I don't remember talking to her about that, but she wouldn't have even known what those buildings were like, because she wasn't there 'til after the war was over.

TI: But just what the community was like.

FS: Well, there was also a photograph of a sign that says, "No More Japs." And it's on a tree right in back of the city limits sign, so that's not exactly putting the welcome mat out for people. And that's really why it was so extraordinary that the Tufts family was willing to have us back. Because I read in the newspapers later on that, in the old Winters Express, right after the end of the war, they had petitions going around where everybody pledged they weren't going to hire any Japanese, sell them any products from the store, and they divided up the Winters area into little, they had little one-room schools like Apricot District or Olive or Wolfskill or Junien. And so they used those as little geographic things, and they had a little captain for each one, who was going to go around and get everybody to sign the petition. And in the article it says that it was nearly unanimous, everybody signed it, but then they said there was always a few who wouldn't sign it.

TI: And you're seeing this in the local newspaper?

FS: In the local newspaper. And the thing is, that's another thing that I only saw later on, probably after I went to college and was doing some research. And the names of some of the people who were like the captains, were like the parents of some of my best friends and everything. And one of them was real active in the church, and he would come to, and liked to sing. I remember he used to sing, "Oh, I Want to be a Christian in My Heart," that was his, he always sang that song. And now that I think back on it, I thought he wasn't a very Christian-like person, or maybe he was repenting at that point, but I doubt it.

TI: That's interesting.

FS: But one other thing, talking about Section 4 that got burned down, I did mention that they built a Japanese school in 1930 there, so there's a whole bunch of kids now that were born in the '20s. So they raised some money, like five thousand dollars, to build this Japanese school which had a little auditorium and room for maybe three classrooms and a little kitchen area and everything, restroom. And they put that in the industrial area, because everything else was like a warehouse or lumberyard or something, and then you had this Japanese school, it was kind of in back of the warehouse, but that was not burnt down. And the story behind that was, in 1943, in the middle of the war, Winters High School burned down. There was a fire in the furnace, and so the high school burned down, and so they needed classroom space. And the old Japanese school, even though it was across the railroad track, was only like three blocks from where the high school was. So it became like the obvious fallback when you needed something right away. But the people who went to camp, they used that to store a lot of the things that they couldn't bring to camp, so it was being used as a big storage thing. So the school district took that building over, because everything was so well labeled and everything, you know how Japanese are, they were just meticulous, all stacked up.

TI: I heard that they taped the floors so they know where the places are.

FS: Yeah. So the school district could identify where all the people were, 'cause they were almost all sent to the same camps. And so they shipped all that stuff to the camps to get rid of it, they didn't throw it away, but they got it out of there. And I still have the big trunk now that they sent to Amache from there.

TI: Well, in some ways, they're fortunate. I mean, I was waiting for the story, to hear that they just ransacked it or they stuck it someplace...

FS: No, these are government bureaucrats. But they did that, because I asked my dad about that, and besides this big chest, they sent stuff like an ironing board, and they would write the camp number, the family number on it and ship it to Amache. But when they got that stuff, I said, "I bet you were pretty happy that the school district, they paid for it and they shipped all the stuff to you." And he said, not really, because they had hardly any room at camp, were so small. But the other thing was it gave them the feeling that they were going to be there a long time, because when you go to camp, you always think that, okay, maybe a couple weeks from now or next month you'll be going home and you can reclaim this thing. But when they get that stuff that you left behind and they sent it to you, it's kind of like...

TI: Don't come back.

FS: Yeah, don't come back. There's nothing... so it was a very bittersweet thing for them.

TI: Yeah, going back to that building, so the school burns down, they take over, they use that. When the war ended and the Japanese started coming back, where they able to get the building back or what happened then?

FS: Well, there was a shortage of lumber and building materials, so it took them 'til about 1952 or '51 to build a new school, new high school. So they occupied that for like eight years during the war, and then 'til about 1950 or so. And so they did return it, and my dad said they cleaned it up real nice and they painted everything and fixed all the windows. And so it was in very good shape, except we had all these kids going to school there for eight years. But they didn't pay a penny in rent or any kind of compensation.

TI: Oh, that's interesting. You ought to hire a good lawyer, maybe go back and see if you can get something. [Laughs]

FS: Well, you know, there's a story, okay, and I could never verify it, and it was actually told by the son of one of the publishers of the local newspaper, that a Nisei came back and he was dressed in a uniform and everything, and he went to the school board meeting and requested that the Japanese community be reimbursed for the use of, the rental value of that. And he was an older Nisei, and I think he was in the MIS because he could speak Japanese. And then after the war, he relocated to Livingston, same place where my mom came from, must have married one of my mom's friends. But because he didn't work in Winters anymore, he was one of the guys who was kind of in charge of that building where they left, and that he came back and was the one who made the request. Because he didn't have to live there, but he got turned down flat, it was like a nonstarter. So that's always kind of, that made me feel... I've been always so proud of going to Winters High School and everything, but there was a little sadness there.

TI: Yeah, it would seem that they would kind of, today, want to somehow make amends for that, or do something in terms of acknowledging that or doing something.

FS: Yeah. And I think they're kind of rebuilding the school now, so this might be a good time to make a request.

TI: Yeah, or just get the local newspaper to run a story about it.

FS: But it's funny, it's that they named that school, they never called it Winters High School, they call it Victory High School. And even in the yearbooks, if you look at that period of time, you don't see any picture with the buildings in it. So I don't know, this is kind of just a sensitive thing there amongst old timers.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.