Densho Digital Archive - Shig Moritani Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

FK: Shig, what can you tell me about your parents? Can you tell me about your parents, like when they came from Japan or why they came?

SM: Well, yeah, both are from Hiroshima. I understand my father came to Hawaii first. I don't know. I don't know him too well, 'cause he passed away when I was about five or six, something like that. Only thing I ever heard, brothers mentioned that he said there's a lot of wild pigs in Hawaii there. [Laughs] So it was a, you know, "picture bride" wedding, I guess, you know. He settled, I don't know if he had a farm already going before he got married or what, but he's quite a pioneer there on the island here. He came pretty early, I guess. He never worked at the Port Blakely mill. And he did real well in Manzanita. That's just west of the Suyematsu farm there. He's 1921 or something, he was about ready to go back to the old country already. He thought he had it made already. He got involved in this property there in Winslow there where we lived there. And kind of a long story anyway. He said Japanese was in there before he was, too, and he couldn't come up with the mortgage or something. It was money problems anyway. My father took the place over, I guess. Anyway, Wayne kind of knows about that transaction, too, 'cause the family lived at Nakatas' old place there. He's the guy that talked my father into buying that place. Well, they never did very well there in Winslow, they just eked by there, pretty poor, poor soil there, you know.

FK: So I heard that your family was the first family to start growing strawberries on the island. Is that true?

SM: Oh, I don't know about that. You know, there's a group of old families that most of the people here on the island, the old timers, really don't even know about. They kind of left real early, and probably right after the World War I or in there. Yeah, it was... I guess they never did work. Most of 'em never did work at the mill, you know. So that's the story as far as that farm there is concerned.

FK: So what year were you born?

SM: Pardon?

FK: What year were you born?

SM: 1921. Yeah, so that was about the year they moved there, I think, the family.

FK: Are you the youngest in the family?

SM: Yeah, yeah. Well, actually, birth-wise I'm not the youngest, but we had a, there was one boy in between Tatsu and me that drowned right down in the bay down there when he was about six years old. And had a couple of girls after me, and one of 'em died in childbirth there and one of 'em was, I guess, what did they call that? Probably early infant syndrome or whatever it is, you know. They both died pretty early anyway. So half of the kids are gone.

FK: And were all of you born on the island?

SM: Yeah, yeah. My oldest brother was born in Winslow, and Tatsu and me were born over there by Manzanita. Yeah, we were all born on the island.

FK: So your dad passed away?

SM: Yeah, 1927. So came there in 1921, and you could imagine how old that house is. He had to reshingle that house already in 1921, and he had somebody come in and wire the house up for electricity. There wasn't even electricity in the house. [Laughs]

FK: So was your family strawberry farming then at that time, too?

SM: Yeah. I don't know exactly where these oldtimers got the idea that strawberries would grow there on Bainbridge there. Anyway, it became a big thing there on the island, anyway.

FK: So how did the farm run then after your father passed away?

SM: Pardon?

FK: How did the farm, who ran the farm after your father passed away?

SM: I guess my mother. I guess she had a little hired help once in a while. My brother, oldest brother was about twelve or thirteen then, I guess. Especially driving the car already at thirteen years old, you know. In those days, the oldest member of the family, no matter how young they were, they were driving the cars. The Isseis weren't very proficient there, driving cars. [Laughs] So I guess she managed all those years there.

<Begin Segment 2>

FK: So you went to school on the island?

SM: Yeah.

FK: Where did you go to grade school?

SM: Lincoln grade school. Right down there where the Winslow green is now. One to sixth grade when I was going there. I guess before that, it was the high school for the island, I guess.

FK: So you didn't have very far to walk then to go to school, then.

SM: Yeah.

FK: What was going to school like? Were there a lot of Nihonjin kids in your class, or what was it like?

SM: What were the classes...

FK: Yeah, what was it like going to grade school at Lincoln?

SM: What was life like?

FK: Yeah, what was it like?

SM: Oh, I don't know. I enjoyed myself anyway. I had a lot of fun as a kid. Playing around all day, and summertime it was really, really a lot of fun.

FK: What kind of things did you do for fun?

SM: Huh?

FK: What kind of things did you do for fun?

SM: Played all kinds of games, you know. To kids today, everything is kind of regulated. You got to have a league and you got to have an umpire. We used to kind of get together in the evenings there in the summer, got an old game together there in somebody's cow pasture. [Laughs] Favorite place was a little pasture right next to the old Japanese Hall. I guess you don't remember that old Japanese Hall.

FK: I do, yeah.

SM: Right there where the Olympian condominium is, right around in there.

FK: So did you play then with mostly Japanese kids or did you play with Caucasian kids, too?

SM: It was kind of half and half, you know. Yeah, I guess... well, Sunday we used to have some real big games. A lot of guys used to get together. We used to go fishing. I don't know, I really enjoyed myself when I was young there.

FK: So when you went to high school, where was high school then?

SM: What was...

FK: Where was high school?

SM: Oh, right where it is there now. All we had up there in those days was just the high school and the bus garage. It had a little annex there, I guess, one building, and that was it. I don't know what year that was, but some juvenile delinquent burned the place down, anyway. [Laughs]

FK: So what was high school like? Did you have fun in high school, or did you play any sports or anything, or what?

SM: Oh, yeah. Sure, turned out for everything. It was very, very small enrollment in those days. You turn out every day, you made the team, anyway. There's nobody around. So I played baseball and basketball and football, senior year there in football, I got hit in my knee there and probably tore a ligament. That was the end of my sports career there. We didn't have no arthroscopic surgery or anything in those days.

FK: What did you do after high school then?

SM: I worked on a farm there a couple years before evacuation. And that's about it. I graduated in '39, so '42 we were evacuated.

<Begin Segment 3>

FK: How did you find out about Pearl Harbor?

SM: Oh, yeah, I think the next door neighbor kind of hinted something was going on over there. She turned the radio on and got all the news there. Everybody kind of felt bad about it. We didn't know exactly what was gonna happen there. And, well, there's debating what to do with the Japanese for quite a while. Everybody in the Japanese community is kind of getting together once in a while and trying to find out what really is going to happen. And about February they had a Tolan Committee come to Seattle. Tolan was a representative, congressman from California and he had kind of a... asking politicians mostly what they thought about what they should do with the Japanese. And me and Pete Ohtaki, Paul's brother, we attended one of the meetings. It was kind of a cut and dried affair. I don't think they had any intentions of keeping the Japanese on the coast. It was kind of... what would you say? Newspapers, everybody figured they were gonna evacuate the Japanese anyway. And all the politicians around Seattle are all for evacuation. And the only person I remember, kind of dissenting opinion, the mayor of Tacoma, Harry Cain, he probably committed political suicide than anything.

FK: How did you feel after that meeting? What did you go home and do?

SM: Pretty bad. First thing you knew we had some troops on Bainbridge Island, too, and I remember had a artillery emplacement right by Weaver Road down there, and probably some other places, too, on the island. Anyway, it was really, they were really afraid they were going to come over here, I guess. And the Japanese were going great guns in Asia, and all the possessions around there were falling left and right. So anyway, I guess they put out a directive that you were supposed to turn in all your firearms. I guess I didn't get the message, anyway. When the FBI raided all the homes there in February, they found it. They found that .22 rifle, the single shot rifle. So they took my mother in. They detained her for, I don't know, one or two days anyway, whatever it was.

FK: Was she the only woman that was taken, or do you know if any other women were taken? It was mostly men that were taken.

SM: Probably not. I don't know. I can't think of anybody else that was taken. He took quite a few male guys, I guess including your father.

FK: Did she ever talk about that experience of being held?

SM: No, she never did. Anyway, the neighbors kind of got a big laugh out of it. [Laughs] What are you gonna do?

FK: So what do you remember about when the notice came that we had to leave the island? Do you remember when they posted the notice?

SM: No, I really don't. So many things going on then. I remember Tatsu fooling around making a trailer for the truck. He's gonna put some of the baggage on the trailer, too, I guess. I don't know what he expected, what kind of directive he expected from the government there. Anyway, it finally turned it out you could only bring one suitcase per person or something, anyway.

FK: So do you remember that day? Did they come to pick you up, or what did they do?

SM: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they came in a truck and picked us up. We had a horse. That's the only thing I remember. It was kind of sad leaving that old horse there. Anyway, some guy took over the farm, he didn't do too well.

FK: So do you remember who that was that took over your farm?

SM: Pardon?

FK: Do you remember who that was that took over your farm?

SM: Yeah. It was a Filipino guy, and we didn't really know him. I don't know if you remember Orville Robertson, member of the American Friends. He became the power of attorney for the place. He really, he took good care of the place. I got to hand it to those Quakers. When the chips are down, they were right there. I remember when I went back to Chicago, too, they had a hostel going already, too, the American Friends. I went to a Lutheran hostel in Chicago. So how many Japanese you think were in a Lutheran church there at that time? How many in the Quakers there? I didn't know how the rest of these denominations, they didn't do a thing for you. I really hand it to these Quakers, they get very, very little donations, too, I imagine. They really, really help you out.

FK: Well, do you know if they helped other families besides yours? Do you know if Orville helped any other families besides yours?

SM: Robertson?

FK: Yeah.

SM: I don't know. I don't think so. Anyway, I ended up in, I finally ended up in New York, and one day I get a telephone call from Orville Robertson, and the Quakers are having a big meeting in New York, so he wanted to see me, too, have a chat, what's going on. So that was pretty nice of him, too.

<Begin Segment 4>

FK: But what do you remember about that day? When they brought you to that Eagledale site and stuff, what do you remember about that day?

SM: You mean...

FK: When you left the island?

SM: Getting on the ferry, you mean?

FK: Yeah, yeah.

SM: No, I don't remember too much about it. Nobody, no friends of the family were down there to bid us goodbye or anything. No, I don't remember too much about it. I remember going into Seattle there, walking through the old waiting room there, everybody, all the people from Seattle were down there, all the friends, you know. You kind of walked down the stairs or something, and the old Pullman was right under that viaduct, the pedestrian overpass from the ferry terminal. And that was it.

FK: Do you remember anything about the soldiers that were there, that came to the island?

SM: Yeah.

FK: What do you remember about it?

SM: They were, they rode with us all the way down, I guess. They were a pretty nice bunch of guys, it seemed like. Everybody's having a little chat with 'em. I don't know where all these soldiers were from, but anyway, we got off the train, and I don't know what... Barslow? I thought it was Barslow. Anyway, we got on the bus there, anyway, and took us into Manzanar. That was kind of depressing, you know. [Laughs] Whole desert out there, that first time all of us ever seen a desert. About the first day there, they had a pretty good windstorm. All that sand coming into your room, everybody's got the diarrhea, that was kind of a low point, I guess.

FK: Was the diarrhea from the food then, or what?

SM: Huh?

FK: Was the diarrhea from the food?

SM: Yeah, I guess so. Probably different water.

<Begin Segment 5>

FK: So what's the first thing they did with you when you first got there?

SM: There was plenty of it. You can imagine, it was nothing fancy. I think they had a, I think they had a little rumor going that those old guys in those camps were getting steaks and everything else there.

FK: So what's the first thing you did when you got off the train? Did they assign you barracks, or what happened when you first got off the train, I mean, the bus? When you first got off the bus?

SM: At Manzanar?

FK: Yeah.

SM: Oh, they had a bunch of guys that showed you where your room was. You know, we were Number 3 Block, and I don't know, 1 and 2 was kind of administration and two was a bunch of volunteers from Los Angeles or something. It was a bunch of bachelors and stuff, I guess, didn't have much to do there. They kind of took care of you. You got issued cots and blankets. Of course, they were still in the first stages of building the place yet. So we were the first families to come there.

FK: So what were the facilities like? Like what were the barracks like, and your room, what was it like?

SM: The what?

FK: Your barrack and your room. What was that room like? What's your first impression of, when you walked into your space, what was your impression? What did you see?

SM: Well, it was pretty bad, I guess. Of course, most of us didn't come from luxurious homes anyway, but you know... well, anyway, that old sand kind of got to you anyway. Probably was all right 'til all the machinery got in there and broke up all that crust on the top.

FK: Well, what were the toilet facilities like?

SM: What?

FK: The toilet facilities. What were they like?

SM: Oh, at first, when we first got there, it was these, what do you call these things, these old... these portable toilets.

FK: Kind of like an outhouse?

SM: Yeah, you know, like the construction guys use. Of course, they had several there. Even the old shower, laundry rooms, they weren't completed yet neither.

FK: So you couldn't take a shower then, or what?

SM: Yeah, there might have been the shower already. I forget what it was. Yeah, it was pretty primitive anyway. I don't think too many people had washing machines around Bainbridge at that time, you know. [Laughs]

FK: So how long did you stay in Manzanar?

SM: Well, off and on, not too long. Following fall, we went up to Idaho to top beets or pick up potatoes or whatever. We went up there to Idaho, eastern Idaho, it was very poor vegetables, poor soil. Oh, we stayed up there as long as we could anyway, and finally got a job plucking turkeys someplace there in Idaho. We came back about December, back to Manzanar. By then I think they just had the, they just had the riot there a few weeks before that. We missed out on that.

FK: What did you hear about the riot? What happened?

SM: Pardon?

FK: What did you hear about the riot? What happened?

SM: Oh, I don't know. Heard a couple guys got killed or something there. I don't know, I really don't know the circumstances, what was going on there. So by then, people were making arrangements to go back east already. You had to have somebody to vouch for you or recommendation. Of course, I had old Robertson there. I guess he must have wrote up a pretty good recommendation for me anyway. I got a permit to go back pretty early. The following April, I took off. By then, the people in Bainbridge Island moved up to Minidoka, but I didn't go. I figured all the paperwork going around there, if I moved up to Minidoka and got to get all my papers moved up there, who knows? All the paper shufflers around and get everything all fouled up, so I thought I'd stay right down there in Manzanar.

<Begin Segment 6>

FK: So did your whole family stay in Manzanar, then?

SM: No, the family left there. So me and one of the Omuro boys left there. A few families stayed there. Everybody didn't go up to Minidoka. In fact, the Nakatas didn't go, I don't think. Nakatas, and I don't know if you remember the Furukawa family. They lived in Manzanita, but they stayed there.

FK: So where did you go back east?

SM: What?

FK: Where did you go when you went back east?

SM: Oh, went back to Chicago. Like I say, I went back, Lutheran hospital back there, and stayed there a couple days 'til you got a job and make arrangements to stay someplace else. Anyway, I moved to the YMCA.

FK: So what kind of job did you get in Chicago?

SM: Yeah, by then the Ohtaki boys came out, and oh, they really started to come out then, the few months after that. And the Sakuma boys, they were out in a place called Marengo, they were farming out there, and called Curtiss Farms. Curtiss is a candy company that makes Baby Ruth and Butterfingers. Anyway, I looked in the paper one day, and something about "their Japanese blood is their undoing" or something. And there's a picture of the old Sakuma boys in the Chicago paper. So I go into the dining room there in the YMCA to eat there that night, and there they are, the old Sakuma boys. [Laughs] The old citizens around there put some pressure on them. I guess they had to leave there, anyway. I don't know what happened there. I think eventually they went back. Atsusa is the oldest in the family, and he married some girl from Sacramento, and this family from Sacramento, he was a pretty big farmer, too. He brought all his farm equipment out there to Curtiss Farms, and I guess everything turned out all right for him.

FK: So what job did you have at that time?

SM: Pardon?

FK: What job did you have at that time?

SM: The first job I had was working in a toy, wholesale house there in Chicago. And you know, a variety of toys in there, and you'd get an order and you'd pick up all these toys, and all these bins are full of toys, fill up these orders. I worked there about six months, I guess, and I got another job working in a machine shop there. By then, the Ohtaki boys and I got an apartment there in the west side of Chicago. And this machine shop happened to be walking distance from the apartment, and oh, that was a pretty nice job. Walked to work, and I remember one morning, it was about five below zero there in Chicago. You walk a little distance in below zero weather, the moisture in your nose freezes. It's pretty cool there.

FK: Now, when you worked on the farms in Idaho, did they pay you then, too?

SM: Did they what?

FK: Did they pay you when you worked on the farms in Idaho? When you went from Manzanar to work on the farm in Idaho, did you receive pay for working on the farms?

SM: Oh, sure, yeah.

FK: Yeah?

SM: Yeah, sure. They paid you. Very little, but... [laughs]

FK: So in Chicago, there were quite a few people from the island that ended up in Chicago, then?

SM: Yeah, I guess there was, yeah. I remember, I don't know if you remember the Okazaki family, they were all out there. I remember Jerry Nakata showing up one day, and he wasn't in Chicago but he was in the outskirts there someplace. He was working in a place that were growing mushrooms. And the Chihara boys were there. Yeah, it was quite a contingent out there.

FK: So did you guys meet up once in a while and do things together?

SM: Yeah. We'd get together once in a while.

FK: What did you do when you met up? Did you play cards, or what'd you do?

SM: Yeah, mostly talk, I guess. This apartment house was quite the place. It used to be a hospital. This Omoto and Chihara, Tosh Chihara, they were up in the top floor, about a four story apartment. Anyway, they lived where it used to be the operating room. [Laughs] Kind of a distinctive room. Anyway...

FK: What was the reaction of the people in Chicago to you guys?

SM: How were they?

FK: Yeah, what did the people in...

SM: They could care less what you were in those big cities. Nobody ever asked you what nationality you were or anything. I had a lot of Japanese working in the toy place, anyway. And this machine shop, too, they had a few Japanese, too. Little machine shop.

FK: So how did you go about finding jobs? Did someone help you find jobs, or did you pretty much do it on your own?

SM: On your own. Go down to the employment office there, they had plenty of work around. There was all kinds of work. Nothing high paying or anything.

<Begin Segment 7>

FK: So how did you get from Chicago to New York?

SM: You mean transportation?

FK: Well, how did you end up in New York?

SM: Oh, I just sort of, you know, by then I took a physical, and they made me 4-F because of my bad knee. So I didn't have to worry about being drafted or anything. So I took off for New York. I thought it might be kind of a little more interesting place than Chicago. So I was there about three, four years off and on. Anyway, I lived in a little hotel there, right in the corner of Central Park, place called Columbus Circle. It's got a big statue of Columbus there, anyway. And this kind of a bellhop there in a hotel. He was a Japanese guy. He's a kind of interesting story, too. He said he came from, he came up to New York from Peru. He said his old family sent him to Peru to avoid the Japanese conscription for the army, he ended up in Peru there, and kind of a, been in the service. Kind of a domestic feel all his life, I guess. One time he was a personal valet for a guy name Gillette, who was a famous Broadway star there, used to play Sherlock Holmes on the Broadway stage. And then he was some domestic there in New Jersey.

FK: So what did you do while you were in New York?

SM: I was in the silkscreen over there. Kind of for movies, movie houses, and print signs on cloth. I think advertising different movies, all kinds of cloth signs like put around the marquee, air conditioned, you know, and make those signs.

FK: Well, how did you end up doing that? Did you have to learn how to do that, or you did that before?

SM: There's nothing much to it. Anyway, this shop is on Eleventh Avenue, right along the old Hudson River. It was kind of interesting. You used to see this old Queen Mary come in with about 14,000 troops on there. You could kind of stand up on the table and look out the window. It was just going right by real close. The Cunard Dock wasn't too far from where the shop was. Anyway, we used to make all these signs for movie houses, big banners. They had had about three women there, and they'd sew all these letters on these big banners.

FK: How did you keep track of the rest of your family while you were traveling around here?

SM: [Laughs] Yeah, I used to send letters once in a while. Everybody was kind of working around the farms around Idaho. Tats, he finally came out to Chicago, too. As soon as I left for New York, he took that job in that machine shop there. [Laughs] He came out with Yosh Katayama first. They went to Iowa, and they were gonna enroll in this chick sexing school there in Iowa. Anyway, my brother didn't go for that job, he didn't like all the little feathers flying all over the place. It was bad for your lungs or something. So, you know, Yosh, he became one of these guys.

FK: So when you found out that the war was over, what did you decide to do?

SM: I thought about going back. I kind of, I thought I'd better wait around and see how things are back there. I came back a couple of times during the war. Not during the war, but after the war.

FK: So by that time, were your brothers back on the farm then? Or was it just your mom?

SM: Yeah, they were both around. Well, the oldest brother, he got into that little beverage shop, up there by Jackson there.

FK: That was, was that Mort?

SM: Yeah. They were, before that, I think they were both making fishing rods down there in the old cannery down there. I don't know if you remember old Casey Hendricks there, he was a guy that promoted that thing there. Then Tats learned, he went to school and learned welding. Well, I think we got into that olympic berries first, I guess. That was a pretty poor thing to grow, too. No crop whatsoever. Being a hybrid, thing was really weak. When you got a good cold spell, it would destroy those canes.

FK: So how did you get the deal with Frederick & Nelson?

SM: Huh?

FK: How did you get the deal with Frederick & Nelson for olympics?

SM: Oh, I think there was a woman. Yeah, there was a woman in Kingston who was making jam for Frederick & Nelson, and that's how we got the connection. Anyway, she quit. By the way, she was a relative of this Richard Gordon, the astronaut, that guy that Kingston grade school is named after. Anyway, that's how we got the connection with Frederick & Nelson.

<Begin Segment 8>

FK: Now, didn't you end up in the merchant marine or something?

SM: Yeah.

FK: How did that come about?

SM: Well, I could see there wasn't too much of a future growing olympic berries there, you know. I always did want to go get on a ship, even when I was a kid, you know. So by then the old Korean War was going, they really needed guys bad, you know. So I got in there. I started out with a military sea transportation service, troop ships. Oh, they kind of, after the war, they kind of petered out. I went with the union after that. So I put in a good many years in the old merchant marines there. That's the story.

FK: So were you out to sea quite a bit, or what?

SM: Huh?

FK: Were you out to sea quite a bit?

SM: Not too much. I kind of laid off in the summer, two or three months. Really gets hot there in the Orient in the summer. Really, really unbearable. You know, that old seawater can get up to eighty-five plus, that's really getting pretty warm. It's like being in a bath out there.

FK: So most of the time you went to the Orient from here, or what?

SM: Pardon?

FK: Most of the time you went to the Orient from here?

SM: Yeah, I guess so, the majority of the time. But as soon as I got in the union, they'd go all over the place. And what they call, they get a charter. You wouldn't know where you're gonna end up. Then they were taking a lot of wheat over to India and Pakistan. You'd go there pretty often, too.

FK: You have any exciting moments while you were in the merchant marines?

SM: Yeah, it wasn't bad when they had the old freighters. You'd stay a few days in these ports, and it was kind of fun. But as soon as these container ships took over, they could really move their cargo, those ships. It was just a matter of a few hours. I used to go with Sealand pretty often. Biggest port, biggest discharge and taking things aboard was Hong Kong, I guess. Just about overnight about all it was there. So these Japanese ports, it was just a few hours.

FK: So how long did you do that?

SM: Oh, off and on about thirty-five years, I guess. I retired in, I retired in '86.

<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.