Densho Digital Repository - Lon Inaba Interview

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Lon Inaba Interview
Narrator: Lon Inaba
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Wapato, Washington Date: May 27, 2023
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-537-10

<Begin Segment 10>

TI: Okay, so Lon, you were just talking about this pressure to change the, where the line for the exclusion zone was rather than the crest of the Cascades. Which from a Washingtonian, it makes sense because we kind of divide the state into Western Washington and Eastern Washington, by that crest. And when I give talks, they said, "Oh, yeah, Eastern Washington wasn't effective," but that's not really true. That's not really accurate because it wasn't the crest of the Cascades, it was changed.

LI: It was supposed to be the crest of the Cascades, but the granges and the VFW lobbied to move that border to the Columbia River. And so my grandfather and his buddies in the Yakima Valley, they were encouraged. They didn't know they were getting evacuated, so they were encouraged by George DeWitt to be patriotic and to plant those crops, because we needed the food to support the war effort. And the Japanese community always wanted to show their patriotism, and so they planted. And if you're a grower, other people might not realize it, but when you plant a crop, everything you own goes into that next year's crop. And so when they were evacuated, it was pretty close to this time of year. The end of May, first of June, they had like seven days to dispose of everything they owned. And when everybody's trying to dispose of everything they own within seven days in the entire Japanese community, you're not going to get a premium for your stuff. And so a lot of people just burned stuff. Some people buried it.

TI: And you're saying burned or buried their possessions or crops?

LI: Their possessions, well, yeah. And Margie Hattori was one of my dad's friends. She said as a kid she remembers bringing everything Japanese and burning it in the trash barrel in front of their house. And so because they didn't what was going to happen, they didn't know if people would throw 'em in jail, they didn't know anything. They were scared. And so it was a tough time, and they could take only what they could carry.