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TI: That's interesting. When you said that, it reminded me of a comment, again, from the author of the Burning Horse that Wapato, he mentioned, was also a hotbed, or perhaps even a focus of the Ku Klux Klan.

LI: Oh, yeah.

TI: That there was a large chapter, perhaps one of the largest maybe in Washington state was in Wapato. And so...

LI: Yeah. I don't know if it was a big gathering, is what they had, and I think they said there was like five hundred people came to this Klan meeting. And the Black community was just right north of the Japanese community where the Buddhist church and the Japanese Association stands. And they also got along with the Japanese community. And so Tommy Uchida was one of the Nisei members of our church. And when I asked him what happened, he said the Klan gathering, they had this Klan gathering, and the city fathers of Wapato came marching down the street with chains and clubs, chasing the Black people out of these cabins and tents. And when Tommy found one of his Black friends, he asked him, "What happened?" He goes, "We had to run for our lives. We couldn't take anything, we just had to run." And so the city fathers of Wapato pretty much chased all the Blacks out of that community.

TI: What an incredible story in terms of what Wapato was. As I'm listening to the story, there's the Black community, the Japanese community, the tribes, the whites, a segment of the whites, members of the Ku Klux Klan, it was a very colorful, interesting, divisive period, and just right next to where we are right now.

LI: Oh, yeah, not far.

TI: And your family kind of lived through -- I mean not only lived, and we'll keep going, but the ups and downs. There were times in the '20s, before '20s, thriving and struggling and raising a family, the Nisei generation, and we'll get to the war and then postwar. So this really does sound like a movie to me, this is pretty amazing. So let's go to World War II. I mean, what happened to the Inaba family? So it's your grandparents, and they have seven children. George was born in 1937, so he's kind of a very young child when the war starts. Sheane is quite a big older, maybe in high school at this point?

LI: Right, yeah. Sheane was, he was the valedictorian of Wapato High School for his senior class. And when the country of Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, they implemented Executive Order 9066 that said all persons of Japanese descent were to be evacuated from the West Coast. And prior to the evacuation, the Japanese and Yakima didn't expect to be shipped out, because the proclamation said they were supposed to be, the border was supposed to be the crest of the Cascade ranges. But they had these Tolan Committee hearings talking about the evacuation and the granges and the VWF were lobbying to move that border from the crest of the Cascade range to the Columbia River. And so they were successful in implementing that.

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