Densho Digital Archive - Floyd Schmoe Interview II (denshovh-sfloyd-02-0012)

<Begin Segment 12>

EG: This is the Densho Project. Their purpose is to make an oral history of the Japanese experience of moving to America. And they want to get the stories of the Issei, and -- especially the Issei and they're fading very fast -- and the Nisei of coming to America, settling in America, the war, and internment and coming out of the war and reestablishing themselves. Some people have got concerned that these people are dying and soon they won't be available to tell their story, and so they want to quickly get it on tape and preserve it. It's being archived with all the modern digital processing of the tapes, so that people in the future who want to write history or want to research some part of the experience of the Japanese people, can pull these tapes and just by pushing a button, can get the specific information that they want. If they want to know about Camp Harmony, they can pull Camp Harmony from a lot of different people who were there and what happened to them, or farming in the Valley, strawberry farming, or anything. It's all being stored up in such a way that it's immediately available and useful to people who want to do research in this area. Matt is interested in knowing when Aki's family came back from camp. Did you meet them? Or when did you meet them after she came back?

FS: I don't remember. Aki... We sent Aki to Friends University in Wichita, Kansas. Where she lived with my wife's family. And I remember her, seeing her there, at one time when we were passing through Wichita on our way somewhere. Then she came back to the University of Washington where she finally got a Master's degree, and she was working toward a Doctorate, but...

EG: She was interned, wasn't she? At some point she was interned in camp?

FS: Yes, sometime she was in camp and she got that $20,000. But I don't remember when or where she was in camp. I remember her in Wichita, and then back in Seattle. Must have been Minidoka.

EG: Okay. Is there anything you would like to put on tape as history that your grandchildren, great grandchildren, might see? Is there any message you have for them?

FS: Well, I'm very happy that you are doing this because the whole incident, deplorable as it was, is part of the history not only of the Japanese American people, but of America. It will fall more or less in the category of the confusion of the Civil War when the black Africans, American slaves were set free and had many of the same problems in returning to normal life that the Japanese have had. An interesting thing unexplainable to me, is that the German and Italians, who were even more numerous -- more Germans certainly than Japanese in America -- were not subject to this unnecessary and painful and... experience of segregation.

EG: How do you account for that?

FS: Prejudice of color.

EG: Yeah, yeah. Race. You can see a Japanese man walking down the street, but you can't see a German or Italian man walking down the street very necessarily.