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DG: And can you talk about the repercussions for the paper and your parents when they started to speak out against the government and 9066?

MW: Yeah. Let's see... there were a few letters initially. One man who wrote about their "puerile editorial," and, "how could they say this?" But there wasn't much. There were people who pulled their ads, a number of people, companies who pulled their ads, so there was an economic loss for them, 'cause they were really living week to week. And even one ad leaving was a hardship. And a lot of people... well, I don't know a lot, but there were a number of people who cancelled their subscriptions. Two stories that I really like about this. One was that after a couple of weeks, they got a phone call from the druggist who was selling the paper over the counter. He says, "I don't know what's going on, but you got to send me more papers because we're selling out. Send us twice as many." So my mother liked to say that they wouldn't give us the satisfaction of having their name on the subscription roles, but they were still buying the paper. And the other was Orville Robertson, who was... if I get this right, was, I think, with the American Friends, Society of Friends, I'm almost certain. This one man sent an irate letter saying, "This is just disgusting what you're doing about our government. Consider this my cancellation of my subscription." Well, the next week, Orville Robertson sent a very nice letter saying that he supported the editorial stand, and he also included the name and money for a subscription. He had gone out and recruited a subscription for someone, and he said he hoped everybody would do that. "For every subscription you lost, I hope you get two more this way." So I thought it was pretty cool.

DG: So it went both ways.

MW: Yes.

DG: What other things have you, do you know about were covered during the war? Any other stories that come to mind?

MW: Well, toward the end of the war, as the war was apparent that it was winding down, and that people were going to be released from the camps and allowed to return to the West Coast, there was a movement, I guess, on the island. Lambert Skyler and Major Hopkins were the two people who sort of spearheaded it. They wanted to prevent the Japanese from returning to Bainbridge Island. This was pretty common. The Remember Pearl Harbor League was started in Bellevue, was very active and was very successful in preventing Japanese from returning. There was a thriving community in Bellevue, and it essentially died with the exclusion because they were not welcome back there. In Auburn, there's a famous picture of the mayor of Auburn smiling -- he was a barber -- smiling and pointing to the sign "No Japs Wanted." So there was active organizational stuff going on in Northwest communities and all through the California. Hood River is an example in Oregon, was very organized. The American Legion refused to include the names of the Nisei in the armed services. They actually redid a sign, I think, they just wanted to remove them from the roles. So there was a lot of... there was a lot of activity on the West Coast, different communities to prevent people from returning, and they were pretty successful in most. About fifty percent of the people came back to Bainbridge, and I think a lot of it was because of the Review. I think one of the main reasons, too, is that in most of the other communities, the people who were being vocal were saying, "We don't want 'em back." And it's hard to be the lone person who stands up against that kind of thing and says, "You know, I think it'll be okay." When everybody else in the community... it's hard to speak up against that. Well, on Bainbridge, it was equally hard for someone to stand up and say, "I don't want 'em back." So it made it easier for people who supported their return to speak up, and that was the widespread, I think the majority of islanders did want them to return. But Bainbridge didn't have a corner on decent people who liked their neighbors, but it was just, the atmosphere was, it's a safe thing to say here. And it's not so much safe to say that you think that they ought to go somewhere else.

So that contributed, but as I said, there was Lambert Skyler and Major Hopkins, who, in maybe February of '44 was the first inkling. Skyler had formed, or was about to from the Live and Let Live Society on Bainbridge, which was very similar to the Remember Pearl Harbor League. He had an idea that it would be really fine, and probably these people would be much happier, too, if we got this island in the Pacific, and they could all go there and be among themselves, and probably the Woodwards could go, too, these "Jap lover" Woodwards could go. And he broached some of that in February of '44 and then was pretty silent until the fall, and it was really apparent that they were gonna be released within a very short period of time. And there was a meeting in November, and there were some two hundred people who came. Most of them were in agreement with Skyler and Hopkins. There were two people who spoke against it, that said, "These are our neighbors." There was a lot of talk about the Woodwards, how they were, "how did they have the right to do this?" that kind of thing, and, "who were they," and, "was there Jap money behind their paper?" Just the same kind of things that we're hearing today about folks, Arab folks. There are so many similarities between the two that it's just striking. But, so there was this meeting, and the Review covered it. My mother was at that meeting, and she covered it and she quoted people. It was thoroughly and objectively covered, and then there was an editorial that said, "You guys are crazy."

And that kicked off a, just a flurry of letters to the editor. It's really, really fascinating reading, the latter part of '44, to read the conversation that the island had with itself. There were those like Katie Warner, who became one of the island's prominent people. I mean, she was a pillar of the community in the '50s and the '60s and the '70s, but she wrote a letter saying, basically, "Yeah, they came and they were pleasant people, but they just took from us. They never shared anything. I mean, one lady never even would teach my mother how to cook rice." So basically buying into that, "We don't want 'em back," kind of thing. But then there were many more who said just the opposite. And there was a subsequent meeting of the Live and Let Live Society, and there were twenty people there, many of those were children. That also, my father went to that and covered that, and it was covered in full in the paper, too. But it was apparent to my parents that the island had made its choice, that they had seen what people had to say, and they'd had the chance to express themselves through the open forum, and they didn't want to have anything to do with it. And when people began to come home in the spring and summer, there were some minor incidents, but nothing... apparently there was one, something was written on a wall and immediately removed. But in other places, there was a lot written on walls: "no Japs here," "stay away," that kind of really nasty stuff. Some homes had been vandalized while they were gone, but the Takemoto family was the first to return and they came back and their house was in shambles. And the next day, groups from the Congregational church showed up and cleared the weeds and brought blankets and cleaned the house and made it livable, brought food.

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