Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Floyd Schmoe Interview I
Narrator: Floyd Schmoe
Interviewer: Elmer Good
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 10, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-sfloyd-01-0004

<Begin Segment 4>

FS: Reverend Emery Andrews, who is a Nisei pastor at the Japanese Baptist Church, had a van. He called it... well, it had a name, Blue-something. And Guilford College at... in North Carolina, who at that time was still segregated, would not take black students, would be glad to have all we could send 'em. I was well acquainted with the vice president, Floyd Moore, and he said, "Send them along." So there was a curfew on in Seattle at the time. No Japanese were to be out after six o'clock at night. Well, we picked twin sisters, Koriyama sisters, and one young man, Willy somebody -- who, someone said about him that he was so American that he was lazy. [Laughs] And the train east left at ten o'clock at night and to get them there was a violation of the curfew. So we put 'em in the back of this van and covered them with blankets so no one would see them going down to the King Street Station, and we got 'em on the train without being apprehended.

They were a great hit at Guilford -- Willy because he was a good basketball player, the girls because they were just lovely girls. I hadn't heard much, although Dr. Moore, Floyd Moore, vice president, mentioned 'em every time we had contact. But I hadn't had any direct contact with them until a couple of months ago, Aki invited me to lunch at a little English tearoom down in the University Village called the Queen Mary -- you probably know it -- and she said she had a couple of other guests who wanted to meet me. They turned out to be these Koriyama sisters.

EG: Imagine that.

FS: I don't remember their first names. Now they were middle aged women of course, and they both live here in Seattle.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.