Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Floyd Schmoe Interview II
Narrator: Floyd Schmoe
Interviewer: Elmer Good
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 22, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-sfloyd-02-0002

<Begin Segment 2>

FS: But, there was sympathy and as Gordon Hirabayashi found out there was a great deal of support for a redress. When he got, he and a Philadelphia Quaker lawyer at the Supreme Court, Charles Evans, got what amounted to a, an apology, and the appropriations out of $20,000.

EG: As the reparations, yes.

FS: Yes. I thought, that is so many words, the money wouldn't actually appear, but it did. I don't know how many of the people, but Aki told me that she got the $20,000. And... I don't know whether Gordon got it or not, he was imprisoned.

EG: Do you remember when he got out of prison?

[Interruption]

FS: No. When he violated curfew by spending a night with us in the city, and turned himself in, he was tried in court in Spokane -- [interruption] -- sentenced to three years in federal prison, but held in jail, in the county jail in Spokane, which was a pretty miserable place. So he complained to the sheriff that since he was a federal prison, he shouldn't be held in the county jail; and the sheriff said, "Well, I could send you to a federal prison in Arizona, but I don't have anyone to send with you." And Gordon said, "Well, you give me bus fare and I'll promise you I'll go alone." So he got bus fare and then he hitchhiked through restricted zone without any problem. He got down to work camp in Arizona. They hadn't been notified that he was being sent, and they wouldn't take him in. [Laughs] So he had to go to a motel and wait a day or two before the local sheriff, local prison authority, would accept him. But I don't know, I don't remember when he... he came completely clear.

EG: But he was part of the reparation process? He took part in that?

FS: What?

EG: Gordon took part in the reparation process?

FS: I don't think he was ever in camp.

EG: Oh. Okay. I thought that --

FS: He went to Spokane soon after the order for internment and... I don't know. My memory for dates is very bad. I remember he was at McNeil Island when Esther gave birth to twin girls, Mitsi and Mari, and he wasn't able to -- he was able to see, but not to touch his babies until they were six months or a year old and he finally got out. I don't remember.

EG: A parole? A parole? Paroled so he could leave the jail? Parole?

FS: I don't hear.

EG: Parole? Given a vacation from the jail?

FS: I don't hear.

EG: No? That doesn't matter. That's all right. That's all right.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.