Densho Digital Archive
Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community Collection
Title: Hisa Matsudaira Interview
Narrator: Hisa Matsudaira
Interviewer: Debra Grindeland
Location: Bainbridge Island, Washington
Date: April 14, 2007
Densho ID: denshovh-mhisa-01

[Ed. note: Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

HM: My name is Hisa Matsudaira, and I am the daughter of Ichiro and Nobuko Hayashida. At the time of the evacuation they had five children, Tomi, Tomiko, myself, Yasuko or Yako, Hiroshi, Hiro, and Toyoko who later took the name Susan after we got back from the war. Well anyway, I just wanted to start out, not from our family, but from the generation before because it has a big impact on our family and how our family dynamics was working. Okay, just as from Europe all the people coming to the East Coast from England, Ireland, Germany, and all these other European countries, they were settling more on the East Coast. Whereas the people from Japan, China, and the Philippines were coming over and settling on the West Coast. Well, there was like a famine or something in Japan and both my grandfathers -- on my mother's side the Nishinakas, and the Hayashidas -- were not the oldest child, oldest boy, so they didn't get to really inherit their farms there. So Grandpa Nishinaka left Wakayama and he came to the United States and he worked for a while in, at the lumber mill on Bainbridge Island. Okay. Later on he went back for his wife and they came, I believe in 19... let's see, in nineteen-oh-something. Anyway, and then they lived on Bainbridge. Then they went, moved to Seattle from Bainbridge. In the meantime they had children, so all the children were born in the United States, in Seattle. Your grandmother, Shigeko, was born in Seattle. Then Fujio, the Arimas' mother, was born in Bellevue. They moved from, from Seattle to Bellevue. Then my mother, Nobuko, was born on Bainbridge Island. So they lived on Bainbridge. Then later on, down the way, one of the younger kids was born in Seattle, so they moved back to Seattle. Then they finally came back and settled on Bainbridge again. Well anyway, on my father's side, they came over in 1902, and they went to, they first stopped in Hawaii where they had a child. Then after they went to Hawaii, they went to Bellevue where they had more kids. Then they came to Bainbridge Island and three of their, three of their children were born here on Bainbridge. That was starting in 1913.

The last one in Bellevue was 1908. Okay, so, my father was the oldest of the Hayashidas. He was born in Japan. So they left him with an aunt and the mother and father came over and then went to Hawaii where the daughter was born. My dad went through sixth grade in Japan, and then he came to America. Okay. Then my mother was already here of course, 'cause she was born on the island. So they were the first couple of both who were from the island, that got married in the Japanese community. That was, that was in 1933. But in the meantime, what my grandparents had done, both sets, was to earn enough money, which was their dream, is to earn enough money to go back to Japan. In doing so, they took the two younger children back with them, the two boys from the Hayashidas, back to Hiroshima. And then my maternal grandparents took their two younger ones, and the grandmother took them back first. Then the grandfather went back with Fumiko later on around 1933. Okay, so they actually, they moved back to Japan to live forever in 1932. So they had spent all that time here in the United States.

Okay, so along comes the war, and along comes many children besides. Before the war, my grandparents, before they had moved back to Japan, were farming. Right as they moved back and things, the three older brothers, Ichiro, Saburo, and Tsuneichi -- who we called Hohoy, and most people knew him as Snippy, farmed a farm on Island Center where they had their house. Then they also had a field in Manzanita near where the Kouras lived. So three brothers then were into farming. It always amazes me when I think of, you know, like my grandparents. They came here on nothing and they spent their life just working away just to earn enough money to go back to Japan. Then they made it and so they, they left their boys with the farm. By just before, before the war began, they had made enough money so that they could build a new house. Several Japanese Americans at that time were then able to, were old enough to own land and they could build their houses. So the Nakatas, the Kouras, the Sakais, the Hayashidas, to name a few, built these brand new houses. It was from scratch to that. They worked hard.

During that time I remember going to some picnics that the Japanese had. There were several, even before my time, there were several Japanese clubs that the... like the Girls Clubs and the Women's Clubs that they had. They had the Farming Association which that made the cannery, put up the cannery. They had a Japanese Hall. So they built a hall there in Winslow where they had several gatherings and things. A Buddhist priest would come over and do services. So they had all these things going on. The picnics were, were like fun and games for the kids. They had races and things, and they had a lot of Japanese food. They would kind of do a potluck type of thing and everyone would share in each other's food. They also had mochitsuki and things like that where different families would get together and they would pound their own mochi. And so I'm glad to see that some of these things are still being done here on Bainbridge.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

DG: Okay, so could you clarify the generations of everyone in your family?

HM: The first generation that came to the United States was the Hayashidas who was, who were Tsunetaro and Moto Hayashida. Their son was my father, was born in Japan, and he was left in Japan with an aunt. Then the rest of the children were all born either in Hawaii, Bellevue, or Bainbridge. Then on my grandmother's side, my grandfather Tsunekichi and grandmother Tomiya, were born in Japan, so they were first generation. Then all their children were born in either Seattle or Bainbridge or Bellevue. That was the generations. Then I'm, I guess, the two and a half generation because my mother was Issei, my mother, my mother Nisei, and my father Issei. And so we would be either... I always say "ni-hansei," two and a half generations. And so that's how the generations went.

After... oh, as you know the Japanese, when the Issei came over, could not own land because they were of an Asian descent. And so they had to wait until their children got older because they were citizens so they could become, they could become landowners. And so my Nishinaka side had their land put into Shigeko's name. And then the Hayashida side had Saburo, Saburo's name on their land. Okay, so...

[Interruption]

HM: Okay. As I said, they had built a new house and we moved from that same property from this cedar square shack into this new house that was two stories with a basement. This was on, in Island Center, right before... road where the Strawberry Hill Park is now. And that house is still standing. But in that house lived my uncle Tsuneichi, Hohoy -- who was a bachelor -- and then Saburo and Fumiko -- and we called her Miyan -- Hayashida and their children Neil, Natalie. And then and our family was my father Ichiro, my mother Nobuko, Tomi, myself, Yasuko, Hiro, and Susan. So we had a house full but we all got along okay, I guess.

Anyway, you know we had indoor plumbing and which many houses at that time, people did not have at that time. Life there was like life for almost everyone on the island. Almost everyone on the island were living, like, from hand to mouth. Everyone had to find their own food more or less and grow their own food, and hunt. Our uncles would go hunting for pheasant and deer and quail. My father would and we would go fishing and clamming and getting octopus and seaweed and gathering things from the sea as well as going into the woods to get mushrooms and ferns and different things along side of having chickens and growing our own vegetables and things. We had a horse to feed, that would help with the plowing and things like that. Yeah, so it was pretty much the same as everyone else on the island. People didn't mind if you went on their beach to gather clams, dig clams, or whatever. Everyone on the island kind of shared. There were no really rich people on the island. Everyone kind of just got along well, I think partly because of that. Because they knew that everyone else was working hard to make a go of it.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

HM: Along came the war. Along came the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I was too young to really realize what was going on. I was in kindergarten, and kindergarten was a happy place for me. Joe Sievertson would drive his bus and we'd chug along down, and we'd pick up the route and all these people along the way. I'd go to Pleasant Beach school and have a good time playing and learning how to get along and, more or less, learning English on the way because I spoke mostly Japanese before I went into school. Those were very happy days for me. Ms. Heffner -- who was our, Ellen Heffner, who was our teacher at that time -- when I left for camp gave me two books. One was a Raggedy Ann book and one was the House that Jack Built. I kind of memorized those books and kept them, but I think they got lost somewhere along the line. Now, so those were kind of days like that. You know, I didn't worry about the war, because our parents and Sub and Miyan kind of kept those things from us children. I really didn't know what was going on. I knew that Uncle Sub would be going out someplace for meetings and things. And then I don't even remember the day that the FBI came for my father. He is an Issei and they have dynamite and they had rifles and shotguns and we had a radio, but it was just a receiver set like a Philco big console radio type of stuff in it. It had a shortwave band on it, but we could only receive and not send. Those were the things were contraband, what they called contraband to us, or to the government. Whereas other families that lived on the island had the same things but it was not contraband for them. It was just normal everyday stuff that they had to make a living or to survive. Anyway, my father was taken away. This was in March. I remember a letter he had written to my mother. She was standing outside reading this letter by the woodbox and she was crying. I had never seen her cry before. So I thought... so I asked her, "What's the matter?" And she said, "Oh, nothing." She said, "I'm just happy to hear from him." And so that was the extent of my knowing what my, that my father was away.

Then, when, when the roundup came, everyone was busy. I don't really remember that very much either because, again, you know, too young. In kindergarten, what do you know? Parents were a little bit more reserved and kept things from the children. We didn't have... we had radio, but we didn't really listen to it that much. It's not like today where you can get instant news, instant killing, instant suicide bombings, things that you see every day, even for the little kids, vividly on television. Things were a lot different then than it is now. When, when that roundup came, I think we were taken on a truck. And I believe that the Kitamotos came to our house also, Shigeko and her family. Her husband was also taken away. So we all went to Eagledale. I remember seeing a lot of people there and a lot of people up on the hillside. I heard later on from one of the second grade teachers that my kindergarten teacher had also ridden her bike down to see us off. So that's what I remember specifically about that along with the soldiers. Then walking down onto the, onto the ferry. It was really, really an exciting time for me because we got to ride on the ferry. We knew we were going to Seattle. In those days it was a treat to go into Seattle. We might have gone in maybe once or twice a year. We got on the ferry and I was running around with all the other little kids. I didn't even notice the adults and how they were reacting or feeling because I was so busy running around. When we got off the ferry we got onto a train. There was a train waiting for us. I thought, "My gosh, we get to ride a train." And so we got onto the train and the soldiers were there. We got our seats and they were walking down. The soldiers were so nice to us. They read us books. There was one with a guitar and he sang us songs. They really helped us children feel safe. I mean, I didn't feel unsafe at all. They were so kind. They spoke a little funny because they were from New Jersey. They had this accent, but they were so kind to us. Then on the train also, we had a Pullman car, so some of us little kids were able to sleep on the Pullman. So, of course, I claimed one of the top bunks and I made my sister get off, out of that bunk, and she had to sleep on the bottom. I was kind of a bratty kid... not kind of. But I was a bratty kid at that time and I had a mind of my own. Anyway, we got... so we slept overnight there and we got off. I remember the blinds had to be down.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

HM: And we got off the train. I don't remember boarding the buses that took us to Manzanar, but I do remember getting there. It was... everything was just flat, flat, flat. There were some black, long black housing. And I thought, "Oh, look at all those rhubarb houses." Because my, my dad had a rhubarb house. "I wonder what those are for?" And then I found out it was our housing. And they were just, still building Manzanar at that time because our community was the first community to come. Then we saw all these men, working, pounding, building the houses. They were very, very dark because they were out in the sun so long. There were ditches all over. They were still putting in the sewer and they were still putting in the pipes and things like that. It was very, very dusty. And so the first thing we hit, I think was, a dust storm. And it was... it's like being sandblasted. You have to get down like this, close your eyes, close your mouth, and just scrunch down. Still you'd get all that dirt and sand and everything. So that was, I guess, my first impression of Manzanar.

We had... another thing I remember about Manzanar was our first Christmas there. They gathered us in the evening for Santa to come, and so Santa had come, and he brought out, had toys, and then we had numbers, they would call numbers. And I can't remember what my number was, but anyway, he called my number, I went up there, and he gave me one of those plastic bracelets. And it was kind of like a slinky, and you put it on, and I thought that was the most wonderful thing I ever had. I still remember that present, that gift, from all, everything throughout my life, what I got for Christmas. And I think it was because you didn't have anything, you couldn't bring anything, and so here was a wonderful gift, and so that made a big impression on me.

And another thing I remember about Manzanar is that my father was released from Missoula. And he came back to camp, and all that time, I thought he was a criminal because he was in prison. And so I must have been really ashamed of him because I went running into the bathrooms and I hid in one of the stalls. And I could hear people calling, "Hisa, Hisa, Papa is home now." But I wouldn't come out and I wouldn't come out. And I didn't come out until dinnertime when that mess hall bell rang, then I came out. 'Cause I always kind of lived by my stomach anyway. [Laughs] Anyway, so that was one of the things that I remember from Manzanar.

I also remember the "Green Hat Boy" who was a peeping tom and "Leapin' Lena" who was from Hawaii. And I remember some of the Californians and they used to wear their zoot suits and swing their chains, you know, their fobs around, and things like that. Eventually we moved... oh, by the way, our family number was fourteen. So you can see that we were at the very beginning of that evacuation. Anyway, so, going back to Manzanar, I don't remember much about that riot thing. But I do remember on Halloween I made this mask out of a paper sack and went to go trick or treating and there was Neil, Mamoru, playing with, with cut up pieces of wood and making blocks and towers and things on his little porch. When I went up I said, "Boo!" And he threw that block at me and it hit me right on the head and I went crying home. So, you know, those are little things that I remember, but I don't remember a lot of the really heavy important things because that wasn't my job as a child.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

HM: After a while we moved with many of the Bainbridge Islanders to Minidoka, because that's where my aunt, the Arimas, and her family were. And so the sisters decided they would really like to be with her family too because she was alone up there, so we moved. Besides that, many of the young islanders were having problems with the Californians. The Northwest thinking was not quite the same as the California thinking, and so many of the families also had relatives or friends from the Seattle, Kent... that area up there, so most of them decided to move up there.

My memories of Minidoka are many. But most of it are children's memories. I remember stepping out the door and you see a whole bunch of people, little kids to play with. All these island kids that we never really got to play with on the island because we lived so far apart. So you step out the door here and here they all are. I played a lot. We played Japanese things, jintori, all these Japanese games. We played cops and robbers, we played marbles, jacks, jump rope... all kinds of things. There probably isn't anything I didn't play. We played Annie over and chased around and ran and ran and ran. Then... but I also liked to play by myself at times. I would look around and find these little anthills and get a jar and put the ants in and watch them busily building their things. Then I put the dirt in the jar and then I'd take it home and watch the ants make their homes. There were irrigation ditches around so when the time came you'd get these little jars and fill them with water and I'd catch tadpoles and I'd put the tadpoles in the jars and watch them lose their legs and their tails and turn into little frogs. Then there were these beautiful monarch butterflies that would be fluttering around between the barracks. I'd run around chasing them and try to catch them. I'd watch them go over to the other side of the barrack. I'd run around. I'd think to myself, "Let me catch this one. Let me catch this one." When I caught it I'd be so happy and they're so beautiful, I'd take a pin and I'd stick it up on the wall. Isn't that horrible? Anyway, that was, that was some of the things that I did.

And I remember this one bachelor man who lived behind, in the barrack behind our barrack, and I was one day doing my ant things. I think I was putting the black ants and the red ants together and watching them fight. Anyway, he came out and he brought me a handful... all these animals made out of pipe cleaners. There was giraffes and tigers. They were just beautiful. Anyway, so I took those, I took those home and showed my mom. So, those are kinds of things that I remember.

I also remember taking classical Japanese dance lessons. I was not very good at it. But we had to put on -- you know when we had a show, shibai. We'd have these heavy wigs and they'd tie you up in the kimonos and they'd put their knees on your back and cinch up the things. They'd put white powder on your face and paint you up all over. And so we'd go on stage and they would have either plays and then they would show us these dances and people would be playing the shamisen or the koto and things. That is where I got some of my Japanese culture. On Bainbridge we didn't have that. I was introduced to a lot of Japanese things there in camp. My mother even said, "You know, it was kind of nice to not to be able to, not to have to go out on the farm from day, from dawn to dusk and then come home and do the cleaning and the cooking and all that stuff." She said, "I even got to take flower lessons and different things." Which she would not have been able to. That part of it was nice. A lot of people got to kind of relax. But on the other hand, there was, they also had to worry. Because like my father or some of the older people, you know, they didn't have anything to do until they got some, some menial jobs. They were so used to working from dawn to dusk that a lot of men, older people, would just be playing go or they felt their life was not very meaningful because they had nothing to do. They had nowhere to really go or anything like that. Some of them became very despondent. Some of them knew that they would not be able to start all over again when they got out. They didn't know when they were gonna get out in the first place.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

DG: Why do you think people were able to... the adults were able to look on the bright side, in a lot of ways? Like your mother saying she...

HM: Well, I... the people I think were able to look on the bright side or to go on because of, of the way they were kind of brought up. There's a saying, shikata ga nai, which means, "it can't be helped." My father would always say, "You do the best with what you have and make it turn around." That's exactly, I think, what a lot of people did. There were some people who didn't. But I think that's instilled in many of the Japanese people and not only in the Japanese, I mean, all cultures probably have that same type of drive. So some people will rise up and make bad things... and take the opportunity to make things a little bit better. It's like when they first got here they knew they didn't have anything and they were... they got up and then they were knocked down, like for the, for the stock crashes and things, and then they had to work their way back up again. Then, so when they got up again, this came and they got knocked down. They just knew they had to pull themselves up and do it.

Oh, one of the things that I did which really helped me grow as a person was to have the freedom that my parents gave me. Most children and many of the adults too, kind of just stayed inside their block. They never went to another block other than going to school and then back home again. But I used to run around all over that camp. You know, we lived in Block 44, which was, which was a special block that they built when they heard that the island, Bainbridge Islanders, were gonna come. I used to go across the firebreaks and go to the canteen, go to the movies, go down to Block 6 and Block 8, to the hospital area, all the way to the farms. I used to run around all over that, the whole camp, with the Kino girls. Their father worked down in Block 6 or something, so I'd go down there with them. They gave me the freedom to do that kind of stuff. I also know that I love to iron. It's so hot hot hot in the summer there, and I'm ironing away and have the radio on and I'm singing away. I had, I'm sure I know, remember most of the wartime songs because I'd sing all the time. And so I had a very, very happy childhood. Sachi Koura -- used to be before she was married to Mo Nakata -- started up a little girls club for us. So the kids our age would meet in one of the, in one of the empty rooms, and we'd have a club. We started making a rag rug and we'd braid the rug and, I don't know how much we worked on the rug, but we'd play seance and blindfold people and say you're gonna hit the ceiling and tap them on the head and things like that, you know. So we did have a lot of fun.

One thing I do not remember, however, is my schooling there. I think I blocked that all out. I don't remember how I learned how to read. I don't remember any of the kids. I don't remember my teachers. All I remember is after school and the summer vacations. [Laughs] So I do remember a lot about camp, but not about anything about school. I do remember missing my friends from Bainbridge. 'Cause we used to play paper dolls and I named some of my paper dolls after some of the kids that I went to school with in my kindergarten class. We used to collect movie stars. So you'd write to them and they'd send you an autographed photo or we'd get all these magazines and things like that. All in all I did have a very happy, happy childhood. I guess people grow up differently and families grow up differently. I know that even my siblings stayed in Block 44 while I was the one who ran around. So everyone has a different life, even if you're allowed to do things. Or maybe I wasn't allowed and I just went. Who knows? [Laughs]

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

HM: Before coming home, back to Bainbridge, I would hear rumors. I was a little apprehensive because you know, you'd hear these rumors about "Oh, people are doing such bad things to other people, and you have to be really good. You have to work hard in school," which I did not. "You have to, you have to be good," which I was not. "You have to be a little bit quiet so people don't notice you so much," which I was not, and so, it was gonna be kind of a change for me. So I was kind of, "Oh, I wonder what's going to happen?" When we got back to Bainbridge, in 1943, no... was it '43? I can't remember. No, '45, excuse me. Yeah, in 1945 we came back between the school session, so we had a chance to kind of get into things at that, at that time. Gene Anderson would come over and the Jones boys would come over to play. I don't remember girls coming actually, but Buddy Cook and several people would come to play with us, so we got a chance to get back into things again. When school started, I was a changed person. My cousin Frances Kitamoto was in my same class, and she was a model student, so, "Oh darn," I had to study. Well, my parents didn't really tell me, you know, "You study harder." They didn't say that stuff. They just wanted to let you... I thought to myself, "I'd better study and I'd better be, you know, pretty good." So I was pretty quiet at school. I'd get home and I'd raise hell. I'd, you know, boss the other kids around. In our household we had the same household. We had Sab, Uncle Sab, and his family, and Uncle Hohoy, and then our family, so we still lived all in that one, one house. We had like... one two... five bedrooms, so, you know, no one could have a bedroom of their own, except for Hohoy. He was the only one who had a bedroom of his own. Everyone had to share bedrooms, share beds. It was pretty crowded, but still we got along okay. We ate in shifts. Soon Uncle Sub got a job at Boeing, so they, their family moved to Seattle, so it was our family and Hohoy that stayed on the island and farmed.

Oh, I guess I should get back to when we just got back from... or even farther back. Our house was taken care of by some Filipino workers that we had before the war. They were in their twenties or so. It was Johnny Cadawas, Thor Madayag, Maximo somebody or another. There were about five or six guys. They moved from their workers quarters into our house. We left almost everything in the house. We did send some of the guns and things down to the Schmidts to hold for us. And some things for the Flodins to watch for us. Some of, some of the things other people took care of for us. Our horse was still there because they, those guys still needed to use it on the farm. So the crops were ready to pick in June and we had left in March. So the Filipino boys -- I shouldn't call them boys, but that's what they were called in those days -- they took care of the farm and they did the harvesting and things. But after a while, I don't think... they gave it up because they got work in the shipyards or other places. Besides that, it would have been hard for them to get the pickers from -- we used to get them from Canada -- and bring them down and things. They gave up the farm and just kind of let it go. When we got back there was no, there were no berries or things for us to get back into. And so my father and Uncle Sub and Hohoy had to find all kinds of work just to get by on. We'd do piece work. Us kids would too, make these, roll these fishing poles and all kinds of things like that. And my father went into gardening and so did Hohoy. He helped Tad Sakuma and Sats Omoto and Happy Nishi and... so they did these different kinds of things just to keep things together. Then they decided to go up to Burlington one year to plant. They did and there was a big, huge berries and things, but there was a big, big rain thing. The berries rotted and they came back home. Eventually they started planting strawberries on the island again in Manzanita. They farmed for quite some time. After Uncle Sub moved, then just Papa and Hohoy took care of the farm and so did, I didn't... we did also. But I didn't like to stay in the house and do housework and stuff like that. I no longer liked ironing. So I used to go out, out to the farm and do the hoeing and the weeding and all those kinds of things with them.

I think... and then in the summertime too when we were, when we had just come back, Thor Madayag had his berries. He lived across the street where the Yukawas lived. So we used to do some weeding there and he'd pay us. And then across the way by Taniguchis, Felix Narte had a strawberry thing there. So this was before our parents re-planted. So we used to go pick berries for him and do some weevil baiting and things like that for him.

It seemed that the summertimes were pretty busy for me because of the farm. I never really got to go to any camps or do that kind of stuff. During the school year we had 4-H. We learned how to sew and things like that. But it was just kind of a normal life other than, we didn't, I never did learn how to swim. Because in the summers I was too busy farming, and it seemed that a lot of the Japanese kids did the same thing. They helped out on the farm and they didn't have much time to go play soccer or tennis or whatever. Those kinds of things were done maybe during the school year. Friends, the friends here were still friends when we came back. And so it was good to know that you had support from the rest of the community. My mother was able to reattach with some of her friends and things like that.

Oh, by the way, during the war when we were in camp, my mother used to correspond during that time and after with many of the young men who went to war. Because she could read and write English and many of their Issei mothers and fathers could not. So they'd write back and forth and then she would write back to the guys to tell them what their parents were doing, and she would tell the parents what their sons were doing. I'm still looking for those letters that she received during the wartime. I found some that she received after World War II was over and those guys are still going into the service or were still in the service.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

DG: Let's see, I had some notes here. What did your parents tell you about, to explain that you were going to have to leave your brand new home on Bainbridge and go to these camps? What did they tell the kids? Do you remember?

HM: Nothing that I can remember. But maybe they did and it just went... I don't know. But I don't think they said anything. I don't think they knew why we had to leave in the first place. There was really no... so they didn't know what to tell us because they didn't know themselves.

DG: And, jumping ahead, can you describe the conditions of your home and the belongings of your home and your farm when your family returned?

HM: Oh, when I was in, when I was in camp and we were told that we could go home, in my mind I had all these pictures. I said, "The first thing I'm gonna do is open that wood box, crawl through it, and not even use the door but crawl through that wood box, get into the house, run down the basement, run around the furnace and all around down there, and run back upstairs, and run around to the bedrooms and the dining room and the kitchen, and peek down that laundry chute and throw some laundry down that chute. Then I'm gonna go upstairs, up those stairs and go to the bedrooms and look inside our little cubbyhole dormers or whatever you call the storage places, and that's what I'm gonna do when I first get home." When I first got home, that was pretty much what I did, because everything was there. Things were kept nicely for us. So we were very fortunate that we had all of this. We still had our wood stove so we still had that wood box. Then we still had the same kinds of things that we had before. We still had our horse. Later on we got a little dog. So it was nice. Yeah.

DG: And how about the farmland?

HM: The farm was still there, but no berries. As I said before, everything had been let go. Before, way before the war, we used to farm when I was little, little, little, like two or so, they used to farm that whole acreage up around our house, which would be about twenty, forty acres anyway. And then, and then farm on Manzanita, which was by Kouras' place. But then after when it was just my dad and Hohoy, they just did the one, the acreage in Manzanita. That's when, that's the one I would remember. They had cleared that land way before they were married and taken the dynamite and blowin' up the stumps and things like that.

DG: And, one other thing I circled here, was did your parents ever talk to you or tell you stories about when they had to sign the so called "loyalty questionnaire"?

HM: When they what?

DG: The "loyalty questionnaire" where they had to sign "yes-yes" or "no-no."

HM: Oh, no. See, it would not have applied to my dad in the first place. And I don't know. My mother never said anything. They never... so it didn't seem like it affected me at all.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

HM: You know, the social structure and the economic structures, you have the haves and the have-nots and then you have kind of the in-betweens and it's more that way now on Bainbridge than it ever, ever has been. Okay, well, let me speak to that a little bit more, if I could. Okay. As I said before, before the war everyone on Bainbridge was poor, and so everyone understood what each other family was going through. After, after the war there were some rich families who lived on Bainbridge, but not all year long. Maybe there was like the Peters and the Herbers, and just a few that you could count on your fingers. But most of the people, the rich people on the island just came in the summer. And so they had summer homes here and there. When the summer was over they'd go back to Seattle to wherever. And so you still had this year round community that was pretty much the same economically. Now when the bridge, the Agate Pass Bridge, came in and the ferry service got a lot more frequent and faster, that's when you had the influx of people discovering Bainbridge and saying, "Oh, my gosh, we can live out here in this country estate and just hop on the ferry, end up in Seattle, go to concerts, go to work. I mean, do this and that. You're right there." And so this is when you started getting this influx of shall we call them rich people or well-to-do people. And then the people who were still on the island were still kind of trying to eke out a living. Some of them got a little better economically and many of them didn't. You will see now a lot my classmates and a lot of people who used to live on the island have moved off the island to either Poulsbo or other places because they cannot make it here anymore. The taxes and things are so high. And so I think the dynamics of Bainbridge has changed. But fortunately, there are still many people who are very warmhearted and very open-minded. So it's still a very easy place to live. I don't think it's so much -- I taught in school here -- I don't think it's so much discrimination by race. It's more by "I have this, you don't. You have this, I don't." And that's sad to see. That's sad to see.

DG: Did you experience any prejudice after the war when you came back? Do you remember?

HM: I was too dumb to really realize it if I had. 'Cause I always thought that people are people all over the world and all over everything. So... I didn't really, per se, feel any prejudice. Only, I take that back, there was one substitute teacher when I was in high school who came over to teach like one of the classes, sub in one of the classes. Everyone was giving this one man a hard time. And so I put in my two cents. Then I went home that night and I felt so bad that I said, "Oh my gosh Hisa, you are just a jerk. You just treated that man so badly." Fortunately, the next day he came back to that same class. I went up to him. I said, "Mr. What's and Such, I want to apologize for the way..." And then out of his mouth came, "This is the first time I've seen a Japanese person who was, who acted this way." Or whatever... "I've never known a Japanese person to do this." And I thought, "Oh my god, he's not accepting my apology. He's not looking at me as a person. He's looking at me as a Japanese." Even if his standards of Japanese or Nikkei is high, why should it fit me because I'm a person. See, that's... even if it's a good prejudice or something, you know, it's still, it's still a bias. Whether it's good or bad, it shouldn't be slapped on to an individual because he is of a, or she is of a certain race or certain religion or a certain family. I think that kind of helped me when I was teaching too. I'd get siblings from different families. So I'd never want to look back on their older sisters or brothers or look into their family thing until I got to know that person, because one child from another, one family can be so different from another child from that child. Each person is an individual. It's... there are things that you can draw out from your life.

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

<Begin Segment 10>

HM: I wanted to go back again. I'm sorry I'm digressing and everything. But remember I told you that my grandparents took the two younger ones to Wakayama and my father's side, they took the two younger ones back to Hiroshima. So when the war broke out, here you had these two families that are split. Here we have the Hayashida boys and their now newly formed families, and their parents and their younger brothers in Hiroshima. Then here you have the Nishinaka girls and their newly formed families here in the United States, and then their two younger siblings, a sister and brother, in Wakayama. Okay, the grandparents in, when Grandpa Nishinaka went back, he built this like a three story house in the middle of the rice field that looked like, that was partly western and partly Japanese. So toward the end of the war when the bombers were flying by, they saw this huge house in the middle of the rice field. They probably thought it was some dignitary or something and they bombed the place. Okay, so that got rid of his house. So they had to then live in corrugated, what do you call that? Corrugated thingys, tin things and pieces of boxing and things like that. So that's how their life was in Japan. They had it a lot worse than we did. And in Hiroshima, my grandfather and grandmother built this huge farmhouse. It was a typical Japanese huge farmhouse, and it's still standing today. My cousin has remodeled part of it and added on, and it overlooks, it's high on the mountain, and it overlooks Miyajima. On the other side of the hill is Hiroshima city. And so my uncle said he remembers seeing this big flash come when Hiroshima was bombed. Fortunately they were up on the other side of the hill, so they weren't affected by the blast. But again, you look there and you see we were so lucky to be here in America. Their families over there were just suffering and they had no food or anything like that. War is not good. And it pains me because you look at the people in England and France and Germany, all those, Italy... European cities that were bombed and destroyed all during that war. And the United States was not touched, thankfully. People in the United States do not realize, the general public, do not realize how devastating war can be. And it hits everyone. So I just cringe whenever I think there's war anywhere.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

HM: Okay, now. I don't know... what do I feel about the memorial? I feel that it is necessary. Because there are still people out here, out in the United States of America, who are citizens or who have become naturalized citizens or who were born into citizenship, that still think that some people are better than the others, or some people should not have the same rights. And I was working this puzzle and I came across this saying that, "It is easy to take liberty for granted when you have never had it taken away from you." And this was by Dick Cheney. Dick Cheney? Dick Cheney. I thought, this is so true. Although I had a really, really good life in the camps, and no telling what would have happened had I been out, our liberty was taken away from us. And the liberty of my parents and my siblings and my friends, aunts and uncles, all these people who were citizens of the United States, their liberty was taken away. And the reason? Just because they had Japanese blood coursing around in their body. They had, they had no trials. They had nothing. The government just picked them up, took them out of their homes without any promise to a future, and stuck them in a concentration camp. This is what I think is so important about this memorial. Lots of good things came out of this. But it was not the government's, it was not the government's place to say, "Okay, we're going to do this to you." A lot of the good things is because the people who were in this situation took it upon themselves, or took advantage of certain circumstances, to better themselves. Who knows, if I was not, and our family was not put into the concentration camp, maybe I never would have gone to college -- I was the first person in our family to do so -- and become a teacher. Maybe I would still be in the fields, scratching out a living. I can't tell, but that was not the government's place to decide that. Maybe I would have become a teacher anyway. So I think this is why it's important for people to hear the stories of these different families, to find out what can I do as an American? Am I to let something like this happen to another group of people? Is it right for the government to do this? We have a constitution. Should we make exceptions to it for just certain people? That's why I think this is so important. Is to let... we as Americans... be aware that liberty can be taken away from you. You have to be vigilant so that you can take steps to speak out and not let it happen. That's what I think, but I don't know. I just...

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 12>

DG: Do you have an opinion on why Bainbridge Island was chosen as the first?

HM: As I look back, yes, I have a... it was easy for them to choose Bainbridge Island as the first community because geographically it was a definite boundary. We didn't blend into the Puget Sound or anything like that. It was a definite geographic entity. Besides that, Boeing, the Navy shipyard, Bangor, the torpedo base, Keyport, the Naval shipyards, they had all kinds of government installations surrounding the whole, the whole island. And so if I were to make a choice, that would be the logical, most logical place to start out with. I'm wondering too... you know, fate has a, fate has a funny way or an irony sometimes in that since our community was chosen, they could have chosen a better community if they wanted to have a lot of dissention. See, now our community is still together with everyone from the community and the uproar has not started with the Japanese community here on the island. The uproar came from the Caucasian community. They're the ones who first came to our Bainbridge Island Japanese American Community to say, "We want a memorial. Will you help us with this?" And so I don't know if this whole thing would have come out had it been a different community. Because the Japanese community sometimes is still a little meek and a lot of people from our community are still unwilling to speak out and tell about their experiences, because it was so hurtful. The other people from our community, not the Japanese people, not the Japanese, but other people from our community have urged us on to do this project. This is what I think... they are ones who are looking out for liberty. So I don't know... maybe they just took the wrong people to go up against. Or, I shouldn't say people, the wrong community to go up against.

DG: You think the government wanted to see dissention or not?

HM: Well, I don't know if they wanted it or not. But some of the people I have heard, not from this area but from south and things, say, "If you guys had just put up more of a fight or something, maybe we wouldn't have had gone to camp." But, you know, our community, we're thinking, well, "The government wants the best for us." I think that was the mind, the thinking of the Japanese community here on Bainbridge Island at that time. I don't know... I wouldn't say that they wanted dissention. I don't think they would have liked it. I'm just saying that in the aftermath, they probably never would have thought that this would come back in their faces. The loss of liberty will come back in their faces with such a strong voice as from the voice from the Bainbridge Island community.

DG: So do you have more thoughts on the Bainbridge Island community in general on how unique it was for the Japanese, for many of the Bainbridge Island Japanese, to be able to come back and continue living on the island after the war?

HM: I think they made it a lot easier. But, the reason that a lot of Japanese Americans did not come back to the island, is because they had no place to come back to. Because some of the youngsters were not old enough, not twenty-one, and so the parents were leasing land, like five years at a time or whatever. Since they didn't, many of them, since they didn't know when they would come back, they let their lease lapse or they did not pay the taxes on their lands. They had nothing to come back to. I think if you kind of look back, you see the people who had come back to the island are the ones who owned land, or owned a business, or owned a home. But the rest, most of 'em, have gone to other parts of the country, and they're scattered all over the country. I think this experience, when we have these reunion gatherings, this experience has gelled the Japanese American community. They still, even if they're living in Chicago, or Boise, or wherever, or Seattle, they still feel that Bainbridge is their home. So they come back. There's a bond that is hard to break because of the shared experiences. I don't know. Just... they're islanders forever even if they've been gone like fifty years.

DG: All right. Anything else? I think that's good. Thank you.

Off Camera: One thing I'm wondering, did your family have to pay the taxes on the home while you were gone? And did you just have money saved up to do that? Was somebody... or is that a story that I shouldn't ask?

HM: Oh, no. That's fine. Yeah, the taxes still had to be paid. But our, fortunately, our family had monies to pay them. I didn't realize it until way later 'cause they never talk about money. They were fairly well off. They had built a new house. They owned the land. They were fairly well off. They bought a tractor and this and that and so we were, by the time things, by the time they worked hard like that, they had enough money saved to do certain things. So we were not destitute, but they never really showed it. That's one of the questions maybe that also helped equalize the island. Is you never went up to anyone and say, ask them, "How much do you make?" Or, "Are you rich?" or whatever it is. You just lived with what you had and it was just kind of known in our family that you didn't talk about money and about how rich you were or how poor you were, but how you were inside, how the person was inside.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.