<Begin Segment 9>

FK: Seems like you have a big job right now trying to get the family property cleaned up, or the house cleaned up. How's that going for you?

SM: Very slow. [Laughs] Boy, we got a lot of stuff. Everything is all mixed up. Hiro's giving me a hand.

FK: Hiro Hayashida?

SM: Yeah.

FK: He's on vacation right now.

SM: He shows up about three times a week, I guess, got to go and babysit over in Seattle. He just got back from New Zealand, I guess. Is he back? He said he was getting back about the first there.

FK: Yeah, I'm not sure if they're back yet.

SM: I think he's back already. So he gives me a hand, too. He's digging around... both of those guys, older brother there, they never threw nothing away. All the old correspondence, old letters, Hiro's digging around there and he finds my brother's social security check. Statute of limitations hadn't run out on it yet, so I cashed it. But being the executor to the estate, you know. That guy was getting a big social security check, all the years he worked. So I'm digging around a couple days ago and I find another check. This one's from the Washington State Pension Fund. He got a little notation on the envelope that he had to replace another check. He got so much stuff, he couldn't find that check, I guess. I finally dug it out of some stuff there.

FK: That's kind of interesting to read all the correspondence.

SM: Some of these old Niseis like my oldest brother and a few other guys, they're trying to avoid the draft during the war. And boy, they're moving all over the place. The old draft board can't catch up with them, I guess. So everybody wasn't all that patriotic.

FK: What do you think of what's going on right now as far as the state of the country?

SM: Terrible. I don't know what this guy's thinking of. The cabinet he's got, they're a bunch of nuts. You think they could have learned their lesson from Vietnam. Kind of same circumstances. Really, really something. Kind of a secretive administration, too. I could imagine what's happening to these Arab Americans, you know, I guess they hang out around, lot of 'em around Michigan, I guess. You can imagine what must be going on back there. Who knows what's happening to 'em?

FK: Did you think it has any parallel with like what happened to us during the Second World War?

SM: Yeah, I guess a little different circumstances. It's pretty similar, though. You know, they got this Osama bin Laden is a big boogeyman there, you know. I remember during the Pacific War, they had a guy named Toyama, a Japanese guy that his picture would come out once in a while in the Hearst paper. He's a very sinister looking fellow, he had a long white beard and droopy mustache there. He was the head of the "Black Dragon Society," which was the big power behind the military government in Japan there, and all this stuff. Who knows, who thought up all that stuff? I never heard a thing what happened to that guy or what. [Laughs]

FK: We're doing this memorial on this thing at Eageldale, we're building a memorial there about our experiences during World War II. Are there any things you'd like memorial to say to other people, and what would you like it to say to other people?

SM: What do I like to say to what?

FK: As far as this memorial that we're building at Eagledale, that we went off from that dock in Eagledale, is there anything that you think would be important for us to say at this memorial to other people about what happened to us?

SM: You mean this thing in Eagledale?

FK: Yeah. Is there anything you think would be important to say?

SM: Yeah, I guess. I don't know... what is it, sixty-five years?

FK: Yeah, sixty-five years this year.

SM: Long time ago. Yeah, a lot of people don't even know this happened, I guess. Is this... you're going to have kind of an enclosed place over there?

FK: We eventually hope to build an interpretive center there, yeah. And there'll be a memorial wall, have everybody's names on it that were on the island.

SM: How much along are they with the place there? I heard they built some kind of a, they had some craftsmen come in there and build some kind of a house there or something.

FK: Yeah, a kiosk.

SM: In the entrance?

FK: Yeah. You have to come to the luncheon on the 19th and go out there and look at it.

SM: Well, might as well promote it, I guess.

FK: If someone asked you, "What did you think about the internment," and what happened to us, what would you tell 'em?

SM: What did I think about the internment?

FK: Yeah, and what happened to us on Bainbridge. What would you tell 'em?

SM: Oh, yeah, I think it was kind of a standard procedure here for this government. Nothing unusual about it, I think. Long list of things that happened to people here in the United States, I guess. Everything is going along there, everybody's yakking about the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, and some crisis comes up, everything is forgotten, anyway. "They can't do that," and they push something through there. They say the First World War, they had 115 paid informers spying on the Germans in the United States.

FK: Well, what do you think you're going to do with your property?

SM: What?

FK: What do you think you're going to do with your property?

SM: Oh, well, a woman named Sally Marin there is kind of keeping in touch with me all the time. I guess they want to, kind of curious to see what I'm doing all this time, I guess, all this time. Anyway, this Wayne Nakata is the one that started the whole thing, I guess. He showed me what they're doing over there on the old Nakata property.

FK: His dad's place.

SM: They got some kind of an organic garden going there, I guess. Anyway, I've been trying to grow vegetables on Bainbridge Island for the last twenty something years. They got two strikes on 'em already, trying to grow any vegetables in that old gravel and sand and rocks over here on Bainbridge. If you're trying to do something in Auburn or Kent or something, I could see it'd make some sense. But to grow vegetables on Bainbridge there, you're really gonna have to do some work there.

FK: What would you think about your house being preserved and turned into a museum or something like that?

SM: I don't know. I don't know exactly what I'm gonna do with the place yet. All I could say, you sure left me a hell of a mess there. Kind of...

FK: Would you feel okay about us coming to help?

SM: Really put the kibosh on my retirement.

FK: Would you feel okay about us coming in and helping you some time? People from the community?

SM: No, there really isn't that... you got to kind of look through that stuff. I got a lot of guys there coming and packing all that stuff away, you don't know what's... just about right with old Hiro there. I don't know exactly what's in all those sheds yet. They're all packed with stuff, too. I haven't been around there for a few years. He had a lot of time to collect stuff.

FK: Well, is there anything else you'd like us to... you'd like to tell us or say to us or say to people?

SM: No, that's about it. That's about it.

FK: Good, thank you.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.