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-01-0007

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EG: Okay. Let's go on with our chat. We want to talk about your work with Japanese Americans in the beginning, before the war even started, but you could see it coming. What do you remember from that time?

FS: Well, we had a house. I had built a house while I was teaching at the University in the Lake City area, and in Lake City at that time there was a mushroom-growing shed owned by a Japanese family. And my wife, while I was away from home a great deal, thought she might as well earn some money. She got a job in this mushroom-growing shed. I don't remember their names, but then not far from where we lived was a greenhouse belonging to the Nishitani family, and the old lady, grandmother, was very friendly. And I think I went there first just to see the collection of bonsai that her son, who owned the place, had some of them he had grown himself, developed, and others he had collected. And there was a daughter... there was a son who had married a haole, a white woman, American, and when they had to go to camp, she went with her husband. They were good friends of ours. Later the Nishitani boys operated the pharmaceutical greenhouse on the campus. I think they still do.

When the FBI was on my trail, they were interviewing all our neighbors, and there was a little canyon up from the lake and we lived on one side of it and on the other about a hundred, 200 yards across, and the neighbor on this side told an FBI man, said, "See that house over there? There are tunnels under that house, and the tunnels are full of Japs." Well, as I think I said, we had these four Japanese girls living with us and we had some... we were keeping for the duration, some of the possessions of Japanese friends. Nobu Suzuki, Dr. Suzuki's wife, had a beautiful bonsai -- If I we were in my room, I could show you a picture of it -- which we kept for her and returned to her after the end of the war.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.