<Begin Segment 19>

TI: Except for by then, Bainbridge Island had been evacuated.

HM: No, no, didn't occur until, they didn't go until end of March. This was February when they had the assembly. And I thought, "Gee, Mr. Sears is kind of, he's telling us things but it doesn't concern us." I felt completely indifferent to him, except for the curfew. The way I beat curfew was that I had a Chinese kid in our class and we were pretty good friends and Albert and I were the same size physically. We liked to play basketball on the same team and I used to pick him and he used to pick me. Anyway, he said to me, "If you want to go out at night, I could give you one of these buttons." They used to have these China buttons that the Chinese kids used to wear, and he gave me one. He says, "Well you could change your name to same name as mine if you're in trouble." So I he gave me... I was kind of... I couldn't care less I guess. And my parents were concerned that I would go to, places like the library and come back late.

TI: Can you describe the China button, what it said on there?

HM: All it said was, they had the nationalist symbol around it, you know, like a bunch of pyramids around there, and it just said "China" on it, in the middle.

TI: And they felt that this was recognized by officials so if they were out that they could show this.

HM: Uh-huh. In fact, (the Chinese community) had communication with the police department saying this is the way they identified themselves as being Chinese. So they couldn't tell us -- just like the incident at Boeing Field -- they couldn't tell us from Nihonjin or Shinajin or anything else, see. So anyway, Al gave me that. So I felt very confident I could get away with any of the stuff. [Laughs] So I'd go out early or stay out late at night and I wouldn't be concerned. But my brother was concerned and my parents were concerned. But I said, "Well, what are they going to do with me? I'm a kid. What are they going to do with me? Throw me in jail?"

TI: So you... you weren't concerned because it wasn't so much that you felt you would get caught, but even if you did get caught you felt that nothing would happen.

HM: Yeah, well I could show them the China button and get away with it. I didn't wear it because I didn't want the other kids to know that I had it, to begin with. This was given to me in confidence, too so I didn't want to abuse it.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.