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BY: And then at the time that World War II started, your dad's father was running a hotel, is that right?

TI: Right. So it was right on Yesler. I've seen pictures, I think when they put the freeway in, it was demolished, but it was a triangular building that was a hotel that was on Yesler. And so he was running that and so they had to leave that so it's right in the, kind of in the International District. And my dad had two older sisters. So my dad was just starting Broadway High School, which is now where the campus of Seattle Central College is. And he was one of three hundred Japanese American students who one day just disappeared from Broadway High School. I believe, at the time, Japanese American students were a significant portion, I've heard maybe about twenty-five percent of the student body or more was Japanese Americans and my dad was one of them, and they disappeared to go to the Puyallup Assembly Center. And the one thing interesting that I learned later -- my dad was too young so he wasn't graduating -- but the Japanese American students who were actually graduating, the principal actually held a separate graduation ceremony for the Broadway Japanese American students at the Puyallup Assembly Center. The Puyallup Assembly Center still is the fairgrounds for the Western Washington Fair. So that happened. But in talking to my father and mother about this, they were shocked, I mean, they were surprised. They grew up thinking that they were kind of... America was their country, and to be treated like this was surprising. And yet, it wasn't, in some cases, too. Because back then, they always explained this to me, was that they were seen as, the term, like a "second class citizen," that they recognized that certain things, they weren't allowed to do. When you look at just Seattle history, things like the public swimming pool, the Crystal Pool, which ironically is now the site where the Holocaust Center for Humanity is, so it's that same old building, but that used to be the Crystal Pool. Japanese Americans weren't allowed to go swimming there, it was a segregated pool. I talked to my parents, there were theaters that they weren't allowed to go into. I'll take that back, they were allowed to go in, but not through the front door to the orchestra area, they could just go up to the balcony to watch movies or performances. And so, as I learned about that, I never heard these stories growing up, it was much later as I became a historian and started asking these questions, you recognize Seattle and other West Coast cities had their own Jim Crow-like laws against Asians and Asian Americans. I mentioned earlier segregated schools in California, so it was such an eye-opener for me to understand and see that there was so much racism on the West Coast, but directed more to Asian and Asian Americans than to African Americans. And I didn't know those stories growing up, I just never heard about them.

BY: It's kind of an ugly history. I mean, the Chinese laborers were brought and then there was a lot of racism against them and they were excluded by the Chinese Exclusion Act then the Japanese came to fill that need, labor need, and then they were discriminated against. I don't know if you know the... you probably know the story of Takuji Yamashita?

TI: Right from the law school.

BY: And it just hurts when, righting about that, and he argues in front of the state supreme court, saying, a country built upon a foundation like the U.S. should not practice this kind of discrimination, his argument was much more eloquent. To which the state attorney general representing the state mocked his argument, "Tired star spangled oration," for believing in these values. It's kind of stunning. Anyway, so your mom's dad, at the time the war broke out, what was he doing? Was he still at the Rainier Club?

TI: Yes, still at the Rainier Club. And so then it was interesting because what happened was, so at that point, all the bellmen transitioned from being Japanese to African American, and so there was this switchover during the war that happened. And so, coming back, after the war, my grandparents or my grandfather on my mom's side, wasn't able to get his job back or anything like that, so he had to become a gardener.

BY: And one might think that, with that kind of position at the Rainier Club, he would have become friendly with some very influential Seattleites, and nothing, no favors for him, no help?

TI: No. I mean, the one thing that did happen in terms of a big help for the family -- and I'm kind of jumping around here -- the archdiocese of Seattle, so my grandparents on my mom's side, they were raised, they were Catholic. And when they were at Minidoka, their eldest son, so my mom's eldest brother, volunteered for the 442nd, and he was killed in action. One of the earlier casualties of the 442, so the first memorial service at Minidoka was for my uncle and six other men, one including... I'm blanking on the name, but the courthouse, the name of the courthouse? Nakamura, was also honored at this memorial service. And so it was a large memorial service, and there was a Catholic priest, Father Tibesar there, who knew my parents' family. And after that memorial service, a few months later, the government opened up the West Coast. This was still, the war with Japan was still going on, but there was a Supreme Court decision, the Endo decision, that essentially said that if you're a "loyal American," the government can't keep you in camp. And so with that decision, the government knew they couldn't keep the camps going, so they said, as a first step, this was January 1945, that people can return to the West Coast, and then later on they closed most of the camps during that year. But when I look at the records, and I talked to my mom about this, they were the first family back to Seattle, like, early January. And that was because Father Tibesar, seeing what happened at the memorial service, helped bring the family back to Seattle. Initially, the family worked as a housekeeper and cook for the archbishop in Seattle and helped tend the gardens. My uncle became the personal altar boy for the archbishop and my mom also helped out. So here was an influential organization and person who helped out our family, but it was not so much from the Rainier Club, it was more from the Catholic church.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.