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BN: And do you remember at the end of '44, the West Coast is opened up. Was there any discussion or were you involved in any family discussion about what you were going to do at that point now that, knowing the camps were going be closed, and you could theoretically return back to the West Coast?

SM: Well, my father knew there was a problem in the West Coast. I guess because of the media and similarity with the media people, he was very concerned about the racial hatred that existed in California. He did not want the family to go back to such an environment. So he decided that we will first try go to Salt Lake City and live in Salt Lake City. And so before the camps were closed, he decided, I think it was the summer of '45, to go back to, to go to Salt Lake City and start a business, and that's what we did. And he started a bookstore in Salt Lake City, a stationery and book store. And it did not turn out very well. Mother was especially wanting to go back home, so after three years in Salt Lake City, then we decided to go back home to San Francisco.

BN: Before we get to... I'm going to ask you a few more things about Salt Lake City, but before we leave Heart Mountain, you mentioned one other thing that I wanted to ask you about, which is later in the incarceration, there was greater allowance of people to go into town to shop and so forth. And you told a story about accompanying your father to go out and shop.

SM: Oh, yes. They had a pass system. They limited the number of passes per day and we were allowed to go into town for shopping or whatever. But we had to return by a certain time, and we had to show this pass to anyone. We had to show it on exit and then show it to anyone who asked for it. I clearly remember going to downtown Cody, Wyoming, and walking up and down Main Street of Cody, which is called Sheridan Avenue, and showing my father, who was blind, what's inside his store, here's a shoe store, here's a restaurant, drugstore and so forth. Then I noticed something really unusual. About every third store, thirty percent of the stores had a sign, "No," and then the J-word. That burned in my memory, I'll never forget that, the hatred that continued to build up in the camp, even to the point where some businesspeople didn't want us buying their goods. And so that's been etched in my memory forever, the degree of hate the local people around these camps had against the people of Japanese ancestry was really bad. In a way, it was good, and that was my lesson I learned. I don't remember such signs in San Francisco of all places, but I remember them in Cody, Wyoming, that they did not want us. Now, I have to be accurate, though, that doesn't exist today. When we opened the learning center at Heart Mountain in 2011, I went downtown Cody and every store window had a sign, "Welcome, Japanese Americans." Amazing change of the people of Cody. But yeah, that's what happened, I'll never forget what happened way back in 1944, '45 when I went to downtown Cody.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.