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EG: Let's talk about after the war in 1945 when camps were beginning to empty. What was your role with -- what did you do in helping people to leave camp and get resettled in Seattle?

FS: Well, I was on the campus, and I found a great deal of sympathy and concern for the people returning to houses that had been vandalized, and equipment that had been stolen, and people who were not welcoming, and neighbors who didn't welcome, some did. But, anyway, we found it easy to organize work parties to go to these farms on Vashon Island and over in the Sammamish Valley, and help the people replant their strawberry fields, recover their rhubarb sheds, and so forth. A picture of a group of us on a truck, flat bed truck, managed Time Magazine, and there was also a story in the Saturday Evening Post, which was still publishing then. But there was also opposition. And down in the Valley, the Smith Brothers' Dairy, which had already taken over some of the Japanese farms, were very antagonistic. And when we held, when we held one meeting I remember down at... in the Valley, they came, sent people to break it up. To... to try to prevent our attempts at helping these people come back.

EG: Who were the people that were working with you? What group of people was it that you were working with at this time?

FS: Well, as I said the Smith Brothers' Dairy.

EG: That was the group that came by to break up your meeting, but who were the people on your side?

FS: Oh, all the University people, young people -- Aki was one -- but, we had no trouble getting a group, a volunteer student group, on Saturdays to go. I remember one Saturday, we went over into Sammamish Valley, where a farmer had had large sheds of rhubarb growing under a slatter shade, and we were able to get whole truckloads of their plants back into production. I haven't thought of this recently and so my memory is a little dull, little confused.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.