Densho Digital Archive - Mary Woodward Interview

<Begin Segment 1>

DG: Okay. Well, thank you for doing this today, Mary.

MW: You're welcome.

DG: We'll start off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background, where you were born, where you grew up?

MW: Okay. Actually, well, I grew up here on Bainbridge, spent my whole life here, but I was born in Washington, D.C. My folks were back there for a year. And, but I grew up here, went to island schools, graduated from Bainbridge High School. Then when my husband I were married, we made our home here.

[Interruption]

DG: And tell me about your family, your siblings.

MW: I have two older sisters, one, Carolyn, who was born in 1940, and Midge, Mildred, Midge, was born in '44. Three girls.

DG: And the whole family was here most of their lives?

MW: Uh-huh.

DG: And did you ever leave the island or have you lived...

MW: Yes. And it's Washington, D.C. again. My husband was back there when we were first married in 1970, he was working back there, and we lived there for a year, and then he did some graduate work with the University of Southern California in Washington, D.C., he was working with HUD. And so we spent another year there. But other than that...

DG: You've been here most of your life. And how about your parents? Tell me about where they were born and where they grew up.

MW: Okay. My mother was born on Bainbridge, her parents and two sets of grandparents had sort of a compound in Rolling Bay around the turn of the century, and she was born, most of her siblings were born on the island as well. They didn't live here full time. My grandfather did something in wheat in Eastern Washington, I've never been quite clear what that was. So they summered here, and my mother actually graduated from Roosevelt High School, but she grew up here. And there is actually a little road named after my grandma here on the island. And all of her siblings settled on the island, so growing up it was great. All the aunts and uncles and cousins, and Christmas was a really fun time.

DG: And what's your... your maiden name is?

MW: Woodward.

DG: Woodward, and...

MW: Pratt.

DG: And Pratt's your married name. So what's your grandmother's name?

MW: Logg, L-O-G-G. It's a little short road.

DG: And how about your father?

MW: My father was born and grew up in Seattle. His parents came from Vermont. And actually, his... let's see, his grandfather was, I guess, a conductor on the Underground Railroad, so he was involved in that, in the mid-nineteenth century he was doing that. And his father came out to be a physician in Seattle, and my grandmother, who I always thought was very proper, and just when I learned this, couldn't imagine, but she actually got on, as an engaged woman, got on a train and came all the way out to Washington. It was a state by that time, but it was, people had images of being the wild west. I can't imagine her doing that, but maybe she changed over the years. And they were married in Seattle and lived there the whole life, and he graduated from Broadway High School, which is no more. Both my parents went to the University of Washington. My mother was graduated in what was then called Oriental Studies, and she studied with Dr. Herbert Gowen, is fluent in Japanese, reading and writing Japanese, and graduated with honors. My father wasn't such a good student, but he was in pre-med, I think, trying to please his father maybe, because he always had an interest in journalism from high school on, he was always involved in the paper, or at the university he was involved in the paper as well. Actually volunteered as a reporter, worked without pay for the Seattle Times for a while after graduation. And then I've never talked to them independently as to why they ended up there, but they actually met in Juneau, Alaska. My mother was teaching school, and my father was working for the Juneau Empire or something like that. He was working for the newspaper and a radio station there and that's how they met. They came back to Seattle and got married and stayed.

DG: And when did they come to Bainbridge Island?

MW: They came... let's see, they were married in '35, they came about that time. And my father commuted to the Seattle Times for a while, Mother was a teacher at Bainbridge High School. And I've talked with a number of people over the last few months who had her as a teacher, and it's interesting to hear how they describe her and what she did. So she was working at the high school and he was commuting to the Seattle Times. And in, I think, 1940, they purchased the Review with another couple. And the other couple decided after about a year that they really didn't want to do that, and so they bought them out. And it was just in 1941, in the fall of '41 that they were doing it full time. He quit at the Seattle Times and so it was in the fall of '41 that they really committed themselves to the Review as their, what they were going to do. But it was a small town paper, I don't know if you've read any of the back issues, but it's just a kick to read. "Jimmy Smith is recovering from pneumonia and really wants to thank people for all the cards." "There was a very nice tea that Mrs. James Jones" -- women never had first names -- it was just fun to read, very gossipy. When they bought it, they made some changes.

DG: How long had the Review been in existence before they bought it, do you know?

MW: 1925 I think is when it started. And a man and a woman owned it and he died, Mr. Niemeyer died, and she was continuing it but she was getting older and was wanting to retire, so it was an easy move for her to shift it over to somebody else. But they didn't know -- I mean, they didn't have any background in running a newspaper.

DG: The previous owners?

MW: No, my parents. They, my father had experience in reporting and some editing with college and high school, but not as a business. They really were neophytes.

DG: But it was a fairly well-established newspaper when they purchased it.

MW: Right, yeah.

DG: I'm curious -- well, tell me, to back up, you mentioned people talked about what it was like to have your mom as a teacher. Share some of those stories.

MW: Oh. [Laughs] Let's see. Kay Nakao said she was a lovely lady with her hair in a French roll, she remembered that. And others I asked, "Was she strict?" "Oh, no, she was very nice, very nice." Very general comments, but they seemed to... another person said that she was one that you looked up to. She was interested in students and would take the time, but she was one that you looked up to.

DG: And did your mom continue teaching while your dad ran the paper?

MW: No. They both, they both stopped doing their other jobs and committed full time. Of course, at this time, they also had an infant child. Their daughter turned two in March of '42.

DG: And do you know how they split up the work or what type of things they did?

MW: I don't think my mother ran the press, but I think she did just about everything else. And it was so different from what it is now, the production of the paper. To get a line of type, they had to sit at this big linotype machine that always scared me growing up. It was big and there was this melting, pig iron that was melting lead, and it was hot and steamy and dirty, but that's how you set the type. And so they both operated that, and they both set up with... I have some actual type here, I don't know if you want to see it now. But they all mocked up the pages and they proofread. Mother did most of the bills, I think, kept that end up. And actual printing of the paper was one person stood on a raised platform, this huge drum of a press and had to hand flip each page which turned out to be four pages, but had to hand flip each one into the... and then they'd get stuck and they'd have to stop. That was hard, it was hard work keeping the machines going.

DG: And did they do the writing as well?

MW: Oh, yes, they wrote everything. And initially, of course, they had a very... didn't have much of a staff. Later, Aunt Eve and Uncle Fred, my mother's sister and her husband joined them and were involved.

[Interruption]

DG: And so who... so now it's a family affair, and aunt and uncle are there. And do you know other employees that eventually were hired on?

MW: Well, the only other one -- well, there were... the only other one that I'm really aware of at that time was Paul Ohtaki, who was a student at the high school, who came in, I think he was a senior. He came in after press night and cleaned up the mess, and he was sort of their janitor. Mother would talk about how he was such a pleasant person to have there because he was, he was so happy he would whistle all the time, whistle the "Stars and Stripes" and marches like that.

<Begin Segment 2>

DG: And I'm going to kind of jump around here, but share with me your relationship with your parents and what sort of things they shared with you as you were growing up, and at what age. Did they always share with you their history and the history of the Review and the war, or was it something you got interested in later in life?

MW: Oh, that was just general sort of family knowledge. I was always aware of the position that they'd taken during the war. I didn't realize at the time how really momentous what they did was, just seemed like... and they didn't either. I mean, they always were, we were just doing what we felt was right, and doing the best job we could at running the paper. They really felt a responsibility. One of the things that they did from early on was to use the editorial voice of the Review much more strongly than it ever had been used before. There still were all these cute gossipy little articles about small town America, but they did use their editorial voice for, mostly for community activities. They were... one campaign that my mother had in her column and in the editorials was to cover the abandoned wells on Bainbridge. She was very concerned that a child would walk over and get trapped in a well, and so she mobilized the island, people got around and covered their wells. They did those kinds of things for the community. Always supported the library and that kind of thing. And that was a change with the Review to doing that. And they also were -- and I think this also was a change rather than just relying on people bringing news to the paper, they went out and covered school board meetings and city meetings, city council meetings if there were those in Winslow at that time. So they were very... it was very important to them that the articles be, the news articles be as objective as they could be and that they spoke their mind in the editorials. Alongside that, they established the open forum so that islanders could also express themselves. And through letters to the editor, they would print any letter that they got. They didn't, they would find space for any letter that they got as long as it was signed and wasn't libelous.

DG: That was an interesting topic, that I got lost there, I forgot my question, I mean. How long did your parents own the Review?

MW: They sold the Review in 1962 and my father continued as editor for a couple years and then he went to and joined the editorial board of the Seattle Times. And for a few years my mother went back to Bainbridge High School and was a reader for the English department and was a teacher at the high school.

DG: And to backtrack again, I remembered my question. What sort of reporting did he do for the Times before he bought the Review? What kind of reporting

MW: He was a "cub reporter," that's how he always described himself. Sort of the like the guy in Superman, I don't know, cub reporter, Jimmy whatever. He had the courthouse beat for a while, and I know at one... and I don't know when this was, but he was sent to Walla Walla to be one of the witnesses for a hanging there as the court reporter, and he said it was, he never really talked about that much other than to tell us that that had happened, but I think it really affected him to have to watch that.

DG: Yeah, that was a forming moment for him. Did he talk about other moments in his life?

MW: Well, we always talked about... yeah, it was normal dinner conversation around the table, what people had done today, and they would share what they had done, who they had talked with, and what they might be thinking about as far as next week's editorial and what was of interest on the island.

DG: So that's interesting. It sounds like, yeah, they were very open and they shared... you all along growing up were aware of their viewpoints and what they were doing.

MW: Oh, yes, especially my father. [Laughs] I wasn't always aware of my mother's viewpoints, but she was more quiet.

DG: So describe your father's personality.

MW: He had a good sense of humor and had good relationships with everyone that he worked with. He could, he had a volatile temper at home and could be uncomfortable to be around sometimes at home, but we all have our foibles.

<Begin Segment 3>

DG: Okay, so I'd like to start covering the war period. I guess we'll just go chronologically, or however it makes sense to tell the story of your parents and the Review.

MW: Actually, to backtrack just a little before Pearl Harbor, I think it was the summer before there was, we were neutral in the war. And being neutral means you're not giving aid to either side in the war. But we were repairing British ships in naval shipyards. And Bainbridge is situated so that any ship that goes into Bremerton Naval Shipyard has to pass within several hundred feet of Bainbridge Island. So when the Warspite, which had been involved in a very bloody battle in the Mediterranean, Crete, I think, they brought it into Bremerton for repairs. And the description my parents gave watching the ship go by, he said that you could still see blood and evidence of the conflict on the boat as it went by. Everybody on the island knew it was there, from people in Port Angeles, it's a big ship and it was coming into Puget Sound, and people knew. And it was a British ship, and there were British sailors who were going in for a shore leave, taking the Bremerton run into Seattle. So it was well-known in the Northwest that that was what was here. The navy requested that the news media impose a voluntary censorship on this, to not publish that. And the three Seattle papers, there was the Seattle Star and the P-I and the Times at that time, they all went along with that and didn't publish anything. And my folks thought that they had an obligation to their readers to report the news, and this was news. It also wasn't anything that was a secret. And I think part of it was that they also wanted to let maybe someone in Kansas who hadn't seen the ship go by at least have some paper recording that it happened. And so they published it. They said the Warspite was here, they sent copies of their article to both Associated Press and United Press International, the two wire services. AP ignored it but UPI picked it up and so did the Chicago Tribune and Time Magazine. And Time Magazine wrote an article about them, saying that this... they had a very interesting description of the Review which I can't quote exactly, but something like "a suburban weekly," which at that time Bainbridge wasn't a suburb of anything, it was just this little backwater. "Suburban weekly brightly edited by Seattleites," which also wasn't true, they were Bainbridge. But they said that they had published this and it was courageous of them to do that, and within a couple of weeks the navy published a pretty complete list of all the other British ships that were being repaired in naval shipyards around the nation. So they just felt that was, I think, sort of the hallmark of what they did. This is part of what we need to do, we need to be honest with our readers, and so they published it.

DG: Was that the first time that they had really taken that big jump?

MW: Pretty much, I think, yeah. I don't know of anything earlier than that. And that was, I think, in July of '41. And then when, in December, when Pearl Harbor was attacked, I think the paper came out on Thursday. Pearl Harbor was Sunday, they stayed up into Monday morning putting together a one-page war extra. To primarily... well, there were two purposes for it. One was to get civil defense information out to folks. "Don't drive at night with your lights on." "If you're at home after dusk, you have to cover your windows," that kind of thing. "If the church bells ring incessantly, that means something's coming and you have to be prepared, and don't ring the church bells except at a time like that," things like that that people needed to know. Who was in charge of what aspect of the civil defense. But they also, about half of that one page extra was devoted to the situation with the Japanese on the island who were... and maybe I've heard different estimates, but one is one-seventeenth of the population of the island, one-tenth of the student population, so a substantial number of islanders were, could trace their heritage to the country that had just bombed us. And they interviewed some of the elders in the community, they interviewed some of the Issei, and I think also some of the younger Nisei were included in that, but mostly to talk with, Mr. Koura was interviewed, I recall. And saying that, "We are one hundred percent American and loyal, and we want to do whatever we can to help in the war effort." And they also had an editorial which was double column and ran the whole length of the left side of the page saying, "Let's be reasonable. We've got folks here in our community who look like the enemy, but we know they're our neighbors and let's not, let's just go on as we have and recognize our neighbors are not the ones who bombed us." And that actually was pretty similar to a lot of other newspapers. There were editorials like that all around the Puget Sound area and even some of the California papers, saying, "Let's be reasonable."

There was a pretty well-organized, very quiet campaign in the next two months. Some politicians, some of the traditional anti-Asian folks from California mostly, but also here, the American Legion, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, that was a very racist group, joined together with, for whatever reason, the Secretary of the Navy and certain officers in the army who seemed to be intent on removing the Japanese from the West Coast. The FBI had done extensive research over the last few years, as had the Justice Department. There were specific reports from Hawaii and other places that Roosevelt had saying, "There's no danger from this group. We have identified people who might have ties, might" -- and it's a short list, "and we can take care of them." And they did that in December. They rounded up a bunch of the first generation Japanese in December, but by February, by mid-February, the... people talk about war hysteria, but the war hysteria was whipped up by politicians and certain columnists, Henry McClemore, Westbrook Pegler, even Walter Lippman joined in, and by mid-February, the popular opinion had shifted and almost every newspaper who had come out saying, "Let's be reasonable," in December, by February was saying, "Let's move 'em out, get 'em out of the coast." And so it's a pretty amazing story, I think.

<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.

<Begin Segment 5>

DG: And I don't know if at this point -- can you give a little history lesson on Executive Order 9066 and how that came about, what you know about that?

MW: I think it came about pretty much what I've already said, because of certain very racist, biased commentators. Some of the... some of the things that were written about the resident Japanese are disgusting to repeat. And there were things, politicians were saying, "You just can't trust these Japs, they're treacherous. Now, the Italians, you know, we can kind of figure out what the Italians are saying, but there's no way that we can know the Oriental mind." I mean, they were saying things like that which I see similarities today to what some people are saying, because there was a different religion, different customs, people didn't understand and didn't live side by side with them to recognize them as individuals. So that was played up on. There's a long history from the time the Chinese came about 1880 to work on the railroad when they stopped, when the railroad was completed, then they stayed to work in lumber and other areas in the west, and took jobs for less pay than what the European settlers were willing to do. And they were essentially forced out of, pretty much out of the West Coast and there was an end of immigration from China with the Chinese Exclusion Act around the turn of the century.

Then the Japanese came to fill the void, and they became very, very productive. They did take this garbage land, and through the skills that they had learned in Japan, they applied that here, and they were very diligent workers. And many of them had families whereas the Chinese didn't so much, so they became stable elements of the community. And by the time of the Second World War, were producing a great percentage of the small fruits and vegetables on the West Coast, so they were very successful. And tracing back to the Chinese, the Native Sons and Daughters of the Golden West, the American Legion, the unions, were, wanted to push out these new immigrants. And that happens with every, it happened with the Irish, it happened with the Italians when they came. It wasn't exclusive to Asians, but the Irish within a generation can lose the accent, and then it's kind of hard to pick out an Irishman from a German. But you can't change your face, and so it was very easy to continue the racist bias against Asians. And some elements of California in particular, but also the Northwest, we weren't immune from that. There was an article in the Washington Star about 1920, big headline: "Will This Remain a White Man's Land?" I mean, they were very concerned that we were getting diluted with this. And scare tactics: "they're going to come after your women." "They're breeding too fast." I mean, all these bizarre, but enough people bought into that because they didn't know the people, I think. Once you get to know the folks, I mean, that's been traditional in the waves of immigration that have come here, once you get to know them, then people go, "Oh, yeah, they're kind of like me."

But in enough places on the West Coast, they were not integrated into the community the way they were on Bainbridge. Many immigrants, I mean, from Finland and from Croatia and from the Philippines and all around the world came to the Port Blakeley mill to work, and they did have segregated areas where they lived. The Fins lived here, the Native Americans lived here, the Japanese lived here, the Hawaiians lived here, they had their little groups. But when the mill finally closed in about 1920, then people didn't go to, okay, this is now going to be Japantown, they went all over the island. Some went to the north end of the island, some went to the south end, and so their neighbors were Croatians or Fins and not necessarily another group of Japanese. So right from the get go, they were integrated into the community, and the schools were a great source of getting to know your neighbors. And by high school, Mother talked about that a lot because she saw that and she had a very sensitive and thoughtful analysis of a lot of things that she saw. She'd say, "Yeah, they were friends. They did everything together at school, they worked together, there was no animosity. They didn't integrate socially. They would all go to the dances but they didn't go together." She said, "Now, of course, they go together and they get married and nobody thinks anything of it." But at that time they were friends, and but that was the distinction that she made, that there was not this social blending, but that's the next step. But the schools were a great mixing pot.

DG: What did your mom teach?

MW: She taught a number -- I found out she taught a lot. Apparently she was the librarian, she taught sociology, she taught English, and I think something else. But I had no idea she taught sociology. [Laughs]

DG: And what was her personality like?

MW: She was very thoughtful, she was quiet, she was a very gentle woman.

<Begin Segment 6>

DG: Okay, and so getting back now to the war period, tell me more about the history of the Review, we covered the first edition, what went on beyond that?

MW: Oh, okay. Let's see. Well, all though the... one thing that I've discovered in some research that I've done was that apparently the Review was unique in interviewing Issei. Many of the other newspapers who were, again, in the early part of December saying, "Let's be calm," interviewed the Nisei. But they, my parents included the Issei, so right from the beginning they were part of it. They chronicled the FBI restrictions, because almost from, in December there were restrictions on the Issei which, on Bainbridge, of course, affected everybody because mostly there were Issei with Nisei within the... so curfews, couldn't go beyond five miles out of their home, had to be in after dusk, those were chronicled.

And at some point, there was a group of young Nisei, most of the Nisei were in their twenties if that, some of the older Nisei were in their twenties. I think Sam Nakao was the oldest at twenty-eight. Most of the Nisei were in high school or younger. But there was a group, a group of young men who when the FBI did come in February and removed a number of the Issei who had been prominent in the community and took them out of the state, most of them went to Missoula where they were interned for, some of them, for a lengthy period of time. But they were aliens, they were not citizens, and that was a legal process; as much as it might be disparaged, it was a legal process. And that left the Nisei, the inexperienced Nisei who had always looked to their fathers for direction and for wisdom, and they knew that it was falling on their shoulders to weather whatever was coming. And they of course had heard the rumors and knew people were talking about removing everyone. At that time, they felt that probably it would be the Issei who would be forced to move but certainly not the citizens. And they came to the Review one day to talk with my father about, "What do we do? How do we act now? What can we do to help our community?" And he said, "Well, you got to stop the Japanese language schools because people just don't understand that," and they went, "Great. We hated those anyway." [Laughs] Nobody ever learned anything, and got in the way of sports. That was not a problem for them. But then he said, "And some of you are going to have to join the army and you're going to have to get shot at. Then if that happens, the wider population who don't know you, don't understand you, will see that you are indeed loyal and you are supporting the nation." And that wasn't a topic of laughter when they realized that that probably was what they would have to do. I don't know that my father was saying that that was the ideal thing that they had to do, but he was looking at the broader picture of how, what's going to happen after the war with the greater community on the West Coast, and what kinds of things can be done so that there's going to be an integration after that, a smoother transition.

And that's one thing that I really marvel at about my parents. They were... well, let's see, they were thirty years old. They'd just started a business, they were neophytes at the job they were doing, they had an infant, they didn't have any money. And I think of what I was doing when I had an infant, and I wasn't thinking much beyond my family, particularly my little baby. They had the foresight, they had the wisdom to see the big picture. They always saw the big picture. And they saw not only what was happening right now and how to deal with that, but looking to what's going to happen when this war is over, and that was in their minds right from the beginning, and it really affected how they dealt with the situation.

As they saw the progression of what was happening with, toward 9066, they... 1940, '41, '42, very different from even 1962. I mean, especially different from 2002. We look back over, what, fifty years of civil rights marches and protests, and it's okay to take a placard and say, "My government's doing the wrong thing. I object to that and I'm going to get a bunch of people together, we're gonna march and say this is wrong." Nobody did that in 1940, nobody did that. And to, especially in a time of war, to say, "The government's doing this wrong." You just didn't do that. Everybody was very patriotic, it was the good thing to be patriotic and to accept what your government said. And the press went along with that. I mean, they didn't show Roosevelt on crutches, they didn't show Roosevelt in his wheelchair. They showed him after he was propped up at the podium looking like a healthy man. So it was a different time and my parents were part of that. They supported their government a hundred percent. It was very, very difficult for them to believe that Roosevelt or the government would ever agree to this wholesale roundup of citizens. And the way that 9066 was presented, it was so vague, and at the same time, there were other announcements coming from the government saying, "Well, of course, the Japanese Americans are the first, but the German Americans and the Italian Americans certainly will be..." I mean, there were statements put out that they were also going to be. So my folks said, well, my goodness, I'm glad that these racist columnists aren't going to be the ones to dictate that it's just going to be the Japanese. Our government is going to apply this equally to the aliens from Germany. Of course, they didn't do that, and it was, I think, very, very difficult for my folks to finally realize that they weren't ever gonna do that. That indeed they were just targeting on the basis of race this one group from the West Coast. And so it's interesting reading some of their editorials in January and into February where they're saying, "Yeah, okay, now our government wouldn't ever do anything wrong." It seems so naive today, but in the context of the time, it makes sense.

But when they did recognize that it was directed at this one group and it was going to include citizens, not only the first generation aliens -- who incidentally were aliens only because the United States government said that they were "aliens ineligible for citizenship" -- northern Europeans didn't face that. Immigrants from Asia coming across the other ocean did. They were, if you came from, if you came from Ireland like my ancestors did, that you could become a naturalized citizen. Well, that was not provided for these people who had made their home here for forty, sometimes fifty years. By 1940, some of these folks had been here since before the turn of the century, but they were prohibited from becoming American citizens, so it's circular, catch 22. But when it was apparent to them that the citizens were going to be rounded up, they immediately began speaking, they said, "This is wrong. We've tried, we've done what we can, and we are really sorry to say that this is happening and now we have to deal with this." And throughout the war they continued to periodically have editorials saying, "This is wrong." When the Japanese who were in the U.S. Army were classified as "enemy aliens," they said, "This is wrong. This is not only silly, but it's wrong." So at each stage along the way, they did make public statements in opposition to what the government was doing.

But in addition to that, they hired Paul Ohtaki who was the first one, said, "Okay, you folks are being taken, we don't know where, but when they get there, we want to know what's going on with islanders." So talk to people, get the gossip, find out who's getting married, find out who won the baseball game, who's the catcher on the team, what kind of jobs are people doing there. Who's sick, who might die. And later in the war when the Japanese were again included in the armed services, who's in uniform and who's being wounded. So every week there was a column reporting the news initially from Manzanar and then from Minidoka about what islanders were doing who were away from home. And they always presented it that way, that, "These are our neighbors who are away for a while. And they're going to be coming home, and we want to keep up on their lives." And that, I think that was just brilliant on their part, just brilliant. Because it had that effect. It had the effect... we knew when Fudge and Tad got married. We knew when David was born. We knew when Kay and Sam got married and when Bruce was born. People could keep up on that. And they were always identified not as, not as "Jerry Nakata as Manzanar has a .50 batting average," but it was "Jerry Nakata of Winslow." They were always identified by their area, where they had lived on the island so they were still, they were still Bainbridge residents there. And so people were able to keep up, not only those who were away in camp who could read what was happening on the island, but the opposite was true.

DG: And beyond Paul Ohtaki, they had other correspondents as well?

MW: Uh-huh. Paul was, Paul stayed, I think, for about a year, and then he went back, at some people they allowed people to leave camps as long as they didn't come west. They couldn't come back to their homes, but if they went east and had a sponsor they could leave, and many folks went to harvest beets and potatoes in Montana and Idaho, and a lot of people went to Chicago. It's interesting, I've never quite understood that. Chicago and Milwaukee, some to go to school and some to work, and then Paul eventually went into the MIS and was in the Pacific as an interpreter along with that, I think there were about six thousand others who went to the Pacific, which was not publicized. Nobody knew that was happening. Interesting that it wasn't. But when he went, Sada Omoto was the, very briefly, before he also went back to go to school. And then Tony Koura was for about a year, and then he left and convinced his sister, Sachiko Koura Nakata, at that time Koura, to take over the job. And so it continued all the way through. A couple of times they didn't feel like they were doing it well, Paul, "Oh, I can't write, I'm not a reporter." And my folks would send him letters saying, "No, this is very important. We need to know what's happening. This is an important part of the paper and people appreciate it. They like this, so you got to keep it up," and they did.

DG: So there was always one representative in the camps.

MW: Uh-huh.

DG: And how about, did the Japanese in the camps, did they receive the Review as well?

MW: Yes. I have a couple of letters that my mother sent about lists of subscriptions, so they were collecting subscription money and people got their paper. I think they would have sent it even if they, people didn't have money for subscriptions.

<Begin Segment 7>

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.

<Begin Segment 8>

DG: I even heard stories of several, like maybe the Takemoto family and my family, the Kitamoto families sending a family representative, probably the head of the household, to come back earlier to check out the climate of the island before they brought the family back. Did your father share any stories of that?

MW: No, they weren't... the way that they described it was there was no, there was no brass band when they returned and there were no barn burnings, they just came back. So he wasn't really involved in that. They reported when people returned, I mean, there was a story about the Takemotos coming. And when your grandfather came, Yuki Omoto came with him, and she was very anxious to talk to the Kay family who had been so kind to them and taking care of their property and other things, so she was glad to have had that chance to have had that chance to come in the spring, I think, and then return in the summer, I'm not sure. But yeah, no, people just kind of came back. Of course, there were people who... by the end of the Depression, many of the families who had been struggling now since maybe the early '20s to establish a farm and had gotten a lot of help from people like the Loverages and the Andersons who had extended them credit so they could buy food for their families, groceries. And they finally, I talked to so many people who, "Yeah, we had money in the bank for the first time. We built a house, we finally built a house." So there were several, many families who had been able to take the next step up from the little shack they were living in to a comfortable home, and some of the amenities that people like, had enough so that they had a stake in the land. Either they had made arrangements to buy land in their sons' names, now they were eighteen, or other islanders had helped them purchase, and would eventually sell to them for a dollar or whatever. There were arrangements like that that many families had, but there also were families who had not quite gotten to that point. They still were sort of tenant farmers. They hadn't gotten, they were almost there, but they hadn't, and the war came, and they had nothing. They were like most of the others, most of the other 120,000 who were in camps who didn't have anything to return to.

One of the great tragedies of this is that when the war ended, people were handed twenty-five dollars, which is the same they give to released criminals, and said, "Okay, go home. And most of the people had no homes to go home to. They had nothing. Maybe they had children who could then take them in, but they had nothing of their own. And there were some families on the island that that happened to. There were some who chose, like the large Sakuma family on the island decided, "No, we're gonna leave this rotten farming, rocky, hilly land and go to Burlington where it's great soil." So there were some families who purposely didn't come back because they found a better opportunity, and there were many who had established themselves in Chicago and Milwaukee and chose to do that, but there also were people who just had nothing to return to here, wanted to be in the area, found a job in a gas station in Seattle or whatever. So not everyone who wanted to come back could.

<Begin Segment 9>

DG: Is there... I'm trying to think, were there any other stories during the war that strike a memory as far as... I mean, you were talking about the relationship that the kids had, the schoolchildren especially. I know the senior class was a very tight-knit class. Talk about like maybe that class graduating in 1942?

MW: Oh, yes. There are a couple of... yes. Again, my mother had a description of the goodbyes. The army came to each home on the morning of the 30th of March, the day that they were to leave the island, picked up everybody and brought them to Taylor Avenue. And the high school allowed their students to leave. "If you want to go say goodbye to your friends, you can." And Mother talked about... she said it was very touching. It was like any group of teenagers saying goodbye, it didn't matter what race they were. There were tears and it was very, very wrenching to watch that. It was difficult to see the pain that they were in saying goodbye to their friends. The younger grades, kids weren't allowed to leave but many did. They played hooky and came and said goodbye to their friends. The class that had just graduated had very, very close friendships and continued to meet. I think they still do on a weekly basis, those who are around here get together for coffee, have a little mini reunion every week. It's wonderful to see those friendships. But one who was forced to leave, Jerry Nakata, had a good friend who was working at the shipyard, and he had asked if he could go and the shipyard guy said no, so he couldn't go. That was hard. But there were kids who, they couldn't take the same ferry that the Japanese were on, so they scurried and got another family into Seattle, met their friends in Seattle and actually chased behind the train waving and crying. I mean, Rich Barr talks about, "We were sobbing, and these were our friends who were leaving. It was so... what could we do? Well, we could run along and wave." So there were some just very poignant scenes of goodbyes, some pictures of... there's one picture in particular, tall, she looks maybe Scandinavian, and her two Japanese friends, and they're just, their faces, they're looking down, and obviously they were very close friends and they're saying goodbye, and they don't know for how long. They don't even know where their friends are going, and they don't know how long, when they'll ever see them again. It was very, very sad. There were many adults who came also to say goodbye to their friends. Jerry Nakata again tells the story of his brother's grocery that almost immediately after Pearl Harbor said these folks came in to pay their bill. And he said his brother would say, "Oh, no, that's not necessary." "No, you need this." They came in purposely to help their friend, kind of make it, ease it a little bit.

DG: And so your parents covered... even backing up, did they cover the stories of the families having to pack up and leave?

MW: To a degree. Again, today I think that probably there would have been reporters there, but no, that wasn't so much covered. Although there were a couple of references to, sort of to counter some of the pictures coming out of California and Seattle of wholesale having to sell the piano for five dollars, and there were a couple of references to, that didn't happen so much here. But no, they didn't really cover that. My mother was there at the landing. I think my father was there for a while but then he also caught the boat in so he was in Seattle, too, to record that. And it's interesting that the overpass was just jammed. You couldn't have gotten any more people on it watching that. And some of the folks getting on the train thought that these people were there to jeer, and some of them thought they were there to say goodbye. I think it probably was a combination. I think there were people who were waving, "We're sorry you're going," and others who maybe were, had a different attitude, I don't know. It's hard to say.

DG: Wow. And so I guess, yeah, those were the big events, the leaving that they would cover, and then during the war it was the corresponding between...

MW: They did have... they were asked by, well, Paul Ohtaki, but others, for references. You had to get, I think it's, at least initially, you needed to get somebody, some responsible American to say that you were loyal. So like Dr. Shepherd wrote some letters saying that, "I've known this young man since he was born, and he's a good person." And my father wrote a number of those, "It's okay for this person to leave camp." And so they were active that way. But... oh, I know the other thing about the graduation. The school district on Bainbridge Island was so supportive of the students, of their students. In December, after Pearl Harbor, the principal of the high school called in individual students. I remember Sa Koura saying that she had had a conversation and Mr. Dennis had said how he was going to miss her and hope things went well and was there anything he could do. So they met individually with students, they also, they had an assembly the day after, December 8th they had an assembly with several of the teachers basically saying what the Review had said, "These are our neighbors, let's not get carried away here. Let's remember who we are."

And there are two distinct things that Bainbridge High School and the Bainbridge school district -- no, actually three, that they didn't have to do, and I'm not aware of other schools doing this kind of thing. There was a baseball game about... well, island Japanese, on the 24th of March were given notice that by the 30th they had to leave. So somewhere in that, maybe it was the 26th. Anyway, it was obviously the last game that the Nisei members of the team were gonna be playing. And Walter Miller, Pop Miller, who I knew later and just loved, he was a delightful man, great sense of humor, he was the coach. And Earl Hanson, one of his players, he did not like to lose. He was very competitive. Well, this was, I think, the season opener. They were playing North Kitsap which was a traditional rival, and he put in all of the Japanese players and they stayed the entire game. They lost like fifteen to nothing. I mean, they just were shellacked. And the team really wanted to win and they were there cheering those guys on. Those guys played through the whole game, and I've talked to a couple of those players who said they will never forget Coach Miller for doing that. Sending them away -- this gets me -- sending them away with that happy memory, that they were Spartans. Lot of the boys wore their Spartan sweaters that day that they had to leave.

Another thing that the high school did, there were thirteen students who would have graduated with the class, and that's got to be a quarter of the class. Yeah, it's got to be a quarter of the class. And these were student leaders. Some of them, the stars on the basketball team, some student government leaders, they were... and many very accomplished students, too, but they just were part of the whole fabric of Bainbridge High School. And here was a whole portion of the high school that was leaving. They made arrangements for the superintendent and for Mr. Dennis the principal to send down to Manzanar copies of the speeches that they were giving at graduation. They sent down the diplomas to be presented, they made sure that the students had completed whatever work they needed to do and probably excused a lot of the work so that they could graduate. And so at Manzanar they had their Bainbridge High School graduation, and at the graduation here on the island, there were thirteen empty chairs on the dais. Isn't that something? It's another thing that gets me, too.

DG: It's all examples of --

MW: Just remarkable.

DG: Yeah, people doing things that didn't need to be done. And people making a difference, a baseball coach.

MW: Exactly. And I think it's Nobi who named her son Dennis.

DG: That's right.

MW: After Mr. Dennis. And then another thing that they did -- I don't know if this made the students so happy -- but it was a good thing for them to do to keep up on their work. Lot of other kids who came to the camps, there were schools there and they were... they had a curriculum and they were trying to follow that, and I don't know how comprehensive it was or how they really were fitted to the students. The Bainbridge Island school district hired a teacher in August to gather material and to create lesson plans for all the students, seventh grade through senior, and sent the material and the coursework down so that they could keep up on their work and they wouldn't fall behind because they were not in the high school, and it made a difference for the kids. I don't know how glad they were to get that homework, but in the long, long view of it it was a good thing that they did. And the school district didn't have to do that, I mean, they actually paid a teacher to do this. It wasn't somebody volunteering. There were individual teachers, Statira Biggs, Biggs, I think it is, Ms. Biggs, is mentioned often by people who had her. But she hooked up islanders here and islanders in the camp as pen pals so that they would get letters. And she wasn't getting paid for that, she just did it, and made sure that people were in communication that way.

DG: Wow.

<Begin Segment 10>

DG: I wanted to get your insight a little bit on your parents, and you mentioned a little bit about earlier on being a product of your upbringing. Do you have insight into what, how your father and mother were raised, especially your father, to get them to the point where they would take this business that they had and then use it and speak their opinion in a time when it wasn't easy to do?

MW: They both... they both were very thoughtful people, and they weren't swayed by popular whims, kind of. They knew that, they knew what the Constitution said, and it was just so simple for them. This was wrong. What was happening was wrong. And, "Okay, we have this voice, well, it's our responsibility to use this voice." I don't think it was very complicated. And in later years, well, much later, how many years? When did they first start getting recognition? Maybe in the '80s by I think the JACL was the first. I've got that award here somewhere. But they were always amazed. "Well, we were just doing our job." They wanted to do their job well, they really took the stewardship of that paper very, very seriously. They wanted it to cover the news accurately and completely, and they felt the responsibility of their editorial voice. But it wasn't a complicated process, they just, "Well, it's wrong and we need to say it's wrong." They didn't think they were doing anything heroic. They didn't set out to be the heroes that some people have looked on them as, but they just wanted to do a good job. And their community was very important to them, and here were community members who were being ill treated and they needed to say something.

<Begin Segment 11>

DG: And at the current time -- speed ahead -- what do you think your parents would think of the memorial that's being built? Or if you can't answer that, what are your opinions on it?

MW: Well, I've been working to get this memorial to happen since what, I don't know, when did we start doing this? 2000, something like that? So I'm all for it. I think it's just... I'm a historian and I've worked in the schools, and I just, it's essential to have something concrete that people can go to and say, "Yes, this happened." I think my folks would be behind it, especially seeing in the last, oh, I don't know, four or five years, the tremendous support from all across Bainbridge Island that has poured into that, either financially or just moral support or people willing to donate their time. It started out a little group of us who thought... I think initially it started out we wanted to have a plaque there. And we did, we created a beautiful, Junkoh Harui did this lovely stone and we have, commemorating the islanders who were sent away. And then someone who had a bigger vision that we did said, "You know, this really is a national issue, and maybe we should talk in broader terms." And so now we are working with the National Park Service and hope to get an association with the National Park Service to really tell the story. But it started just with a small group, and we made a plaque and we wanted to honor our islanders. And then as it got bigger, people would kind of tentatively come up and say, "I've got, this I could offer to do. Would you mind if I helped?" People were very tentative, not wanting to intrude, I don't know. But we said yes, and one of them was the timber framers group who came and very, very politely, and sort of hesitant, "We don't want to intrude, but we'd be willing to make some of the pavilions for you." And there have been lots of folks like that. My parents would look at that and say, "Okay, this is Bainbridge Island doing its Bainbridge Island thing." We've got folks from all across the island who were supporting this and they'd be a hundred percent behind it. They always were strong supporters of Bainbridge Island and community activities. My mother spent years with the Kitsap Regional Library, and actually was part of the group that constructed the first central library that now is serving all of the branches of the library. That was just very important to have a library so people on Bainbridge Island could get the books they wanted, that kind of thing. They would see this as a community project and they'd be behind it a hundred percent.

DG: So can you give some history on how the memorial committee was formed?

MW: Well, it started... if I'm understanding it, it started with the Bainbridge Island North Kitsap Interfaith Council is where it first began. And I wasn't involved at that point, so I'm not really sure, but it did grow out of that group. And I think they approached the island Japanese community and said, "Would you be interested in doing this?" And they said yes, and so we spent two or three years working on the small plaque that we have now at Taylor Avenue. And then, as I say, someone said, "Let's look beyond this." And the National Park Service has been absolutely wonderful in the support that they've given us, how to tell the story, for one thing, and then how to maneuver, to touch all the bases that we need to do to get to the point where there... it looks at this point that there is probable association with the National Guard Service, which would be tremendous, particularly with the interpretive center, to use their expertise and their knowledge, and how we can tell the story in a meaningful way.

DG: And what sort of things... highlight the important parts of what you want the memorial to stand for.

MW: Oh. Well, to me, as a teacher and a historian, I see the interpretive center as really going to be wonderful. But to me, the heart of the memorial is the wall, which is our next step, the memorial wall that borders Taylor Avenue, the road that the islanders walked down with soldiers with fixed bayonets leading them onto a ferry in exile away from their home. We plan to have the names of each of those people on the wall, and I want to walk touching each name. I just want to walk with those people down onto the dock and off the island. That's the heart of it for me. That's what it was, that's what... these people were exiled from their home. I've known this story my whole life, I still cannot get my head around it. I was privileged to be part of the Minidoka pilgrimage this year, and to go and to stand on that land... it was overpowering to be, it was like I was standing on sacred ground. It's hard to describe. But we had an opportunity to see one of the barracks, tarpaper barracks, walls that didn't go up to the ceiling, metal cots that people slept on. I went around in back and I just stood there for the longest time and thought of my friends and my friends' parents and tried to imagine what it must have been like. I still can't quite grasp it. It was very powerful to be there, and I hope that we can create something of that power so people get a visceral connection. These were people just like the rest of us. Just, these were people, and they were forced by their government to go into concentration camp, to be incarcerated, for nothing. They had done nothing. They had to live in a room, twenty by twenty. I was, in Minidoka I was with Fumiko Hayashida who is, what, ninety-six? And she got kind of choked up when we were actually in the barrack, and I don't think anybody else noticed, but I kind of just went and stood by her, put my arm around her a little bit, and she said, "I can't talk about this. I can't talk about it, but I wish I'd never come. I wish I'd never come." And she was looking at these cots. And later that day, I said, "How are you feeling? Are you okay?" She said, "Yeah, still don't want to talk about it, but I'm glad I came." But it was so hard for her to be in that room. They had, she and her husband had two small children, and Leonard, their third, was born in August. So they had three children, and they were allowed five cots. If they had had five cots, there wouldn't have been any room to turn around. So she and her husband, for the remainder of the time that they were incarcerated, each slept with a child in a cot that, it would have been hard for an adult to turn over in. They shared that with a child for two years, for two and a half years.

DG: It always gets me, the amount of sheltering that must have gone on with young children. I know I would do the same with my own kids. So the pressure on the parents to try to make it normal...

MW: I haven't talked with anybody who was a child who has a bad memory. Well, Hisa and her father, but just a day to day bad memory, "It was fun." There were those, who was it that said, "When are we going to go back to America?" Who said that? Somebody asked their parents, "When are going to go back to America?" But no, they had fun. That was a real challenge for parents, but they did it, and they did it across the board. The kids had a good time. They were sheltered. She didn't have a washing machine. Finally, was it Felix Narte who brought the washing machine to Minidoka? That was, what, a year and a half into it? And she had two kids, three kids in diapers? A washboard? One lamp hanging from the middle of the room, no running water? You couldn't eat in your room, you couldn't cook in your room, had to make your own furniture.

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DG: Do you have anything else you want to share about the pilgrimage?

MW: Oh, that was wonderful. It truly was wonderful. If anybody has an interest, I would say go if they have the slightest interest. I learned so much, and the camaraderie that... I made friends with people who... it was like going to Brownie Scout camp, it was sort of, you know? Because you just... the associations with people I had, a woman who read some poetry, and I asked, "I'd love to get a copy of that." She sent me some of her poetry. Another woman who had written some stories, wonderful stories, which I hope she publishes, sent me some of those. You shared things that... and I get emotional when I talk about emotional things, so I don't, at memorial services I always want to stand up and say, "I love this person," so I don't want do that. But I thought it was important enough that I shared my impressions of finally crossing the canal and standing in Minidoka and seeing the barrack. And I did; I cried, and it didn't matter. It was that kind of sharing, real sharing. It was quite wonderful.

DG: And I want to hear your journey with your book that you're writing right now. When did you get the idea that you wanted to write this book and that sort of thing?

MW: It started with the scrapbook that Paul Ohtaki, who was the first of the camp correspondents, kept. He has many of the articles that were published in the Review, has the editorials, and he followed, beyond that, he followed the sort of history of my parents and then some of the awards that they were given in later life. And I was going to redo that for the historical society, just kind of get it more accessible, but I think it's a wonderful resource. It's a wonderful resource just if you're interested in it, to flip through and read the letters to the editor and the editorials. It's very, very informative. And to make it accessible for schools. And then someone said, "You know, what we really need and we don't have is the story about Bainbridge because Bainbridge was different, ant the Review was different, and you really ought to write about your parents." So I'm using Paul's scrapbook, that was sort of the basis of it. But it's chronicling how Bainbridge reacted differently than most every other community that I'm aware of, and some of the reasons why. But it's not intended to be a scholarly text. After the actual writing is completed, we hope to approach people in the community to approach people in the community to dig in their closets and their attics and bring out artifacts from that time would help also tell the story. I've seen some scrapbooks that people have lent me where they have the, everybody had to wear a tag, that's how they were identified. Everybody had to have a tag with the family number on it, and that was also put on the suitcase that they had. She has her original tags. That would be great to photograph, and other people have work cards that really were punch cards, but cards that they needed to have to work, to show that they were working at Manzanar, or work release cards, you had to have this form to be able to go harvest beet. But all of those kinds of things would make it much more interesting, and letters home, and try to tell the story so it's accessible for people to read. It's been an interesting progression from thinking I could possibly write a book to just being so fascinated by the story. And I sometimes spend a whole day on something that's very, very interesting. I know it's not going to go in the book, but I get, I mean, it's just a fascinating story, it truly is. There are so many aspects of it, that that's what we're trying to do and we're working with a publishing company on the island who's been very generous in what they've supplied. So yeah, I hope to do this.

DG: Very exciting. [Laughs]