<Begin Segment 4>

DG: Do you know how the... how was the hysteria spread? Was it in articles?

MW: The Secretary of the Navy came back from Hawaii and said, "Oh my gosh, there was a whole network of sabotage by these Japanese there." The... I don't know what, would he be governor of the territory? I suppose, but anyway, whoever was in charge of the government there was saying, "No, there's no problem here." Other people were saying, "There is no problem here." And it was later proven that there was no problem there. But he came back and said, "Oh, there's sabotage all over." He basically lied, and General DeWitt, who was, he was in the army and he had been given the command of the West Coast, and some people think that he was easily swayed, other people have different opinions, but he said, "Oh, okay." He believed him. And there were lots of rumors that were reported, particularly in the California papers about submarines landing, and they're gonna come ashore and we have all these people in our midst. And the way that it was described, with innuendo, no direct, but, "Why are all of these Japanese around the military installations? Why are they all around the airports?" Well, they were around the military installations and the airports because that was garbage land that nobody wanted. And they had taken it, and through their skill had created great agricultural land out of it. But they didn't go there because the military installations were there, the military installations grew up after they were there. But the implication was that they were surrounding so that they could see... I've read some of the FBI reports about island Japanese, and one, your grandfather was described as being suspicious because he traveled the ferry, he worked as a jeweler and he traveled the ferry and he delivered packages to some of the Japanese ships. Well, he was, people had bought jewelry he was delivering. And also he and two other Japanese men were gathering clams on the beach overlooking Rich Passage on the way to Bremerton. They were down digging clams and someone that was looked at as being suspicious. So I forget my... what was the question?

DG: Well, we were talking about how the hysteria had really spread.

MW: Oh, yes. And there were also rumors that were picked up, the P-I and the Times were great at reporting, "Oh, arrows of fire pointing toward Boeing. The island Japanese have planted their rows of strawberries pointing toward Bangor or Keyport." I mean, pick a direction on Bainbridge Island that doesn't point to a military installation; we're surrounded by them. So you couldn't win. And some people bought them, and it just kind of added to that. Also, there were the Issei, the aliens who were picked up, those always got big headlines. When they were released, that didn't get a headline. And another thing that was just widespread all up and down the coast, "The dirty Japs in the Pacific were killing our guys." And a similar headline would be, "Japs register for," talking about the resident Japanese here. They were both called "Japs." And so in the mind it becomes the same. You're talking about the same people when that was not the case. So a lot of things contributed to it, but Henry Jackson became one of the icons of Washington State history, and Warren Magnuson, they were... Henry Jackson was probably worse than Magnuson, but was intent that the "Japs were not gonna come back to Everett." A lot of respected politicians, Earl Warren, who later became Chief Justice of the Supreme Court and a great supporter of civil rights with Brown vs. Board of Education, he was all for "getting the Japs out of California."

DG: And going back to your parents and the Review, and even from that first day and then continuing on supporting the Japanese on Bainbridge Island, do you know, did your parents have personal relationships other than with Paul Ohtaki? They did this purely out of just their editorial and newspaper ownership responsibilities?

MW: Yes. I think it probably started with their understanding of the Constitution. That what was being proposed was a violation of citizenship rights, that you can't... what was being discussed in that time period, and what eventually came about in March of '42 was the wholesale roundup of a group of people based totally on their ethnic background without any arrest, any day in court, due process of law was out the window, and it was all because there might be a spy. So they rounded up everyone, 120,000 people, because maybe there was a spy there. None was ever charged. None of the people who were sent to concentration camp was ever even charged with a crime of that, treason or sabotage, let along proven guilty in court. And they said, "This is a direct violation of the Constitution that provides due process of law to citizens." I think that had that not been the issue, I think that my mother probably would have spoken out anyway, because she saw not only the injustice against citizenship rights, but she saw the human, that this was just not right, regardless of whether it was constitutional or not. I don't know that my father would have been as adamant if the constitutional issue hadn't been there. I don't know. That was his background. Just, we're all the product of our upbringing. But Mother shopped at Eagle Harbor grocery with Johnnie and Pauline Nakata, so she knew them, but not socially. And they were working twenty-four hours a day, so they didn't have a lot of social life anyway. But no, they weren't friends. They in later years became very, very close friends with a number of the people in the Japanese community, but not in 1941.

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