Densho Digital Archive - Harold Hal Champeness Interview

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HM: Alright. I guess we'll just start out with you, having you say your name and when you born, and tell us a little bit about your background.

HC: My name is Harold, also known as Hal, Champeness, and my first trip to Bainbridge Island was when I was six weeks old in 1923. And we lived here about a year and a half and moved back to Seattle for a while, and then back out when I was about four years old, lived in Seabold. For many, many years we only rented. And started school at Olympic School on Day Road, and then the following year, at second grade, we enrolled at Lincoln grade school.

HM: How did you get there, from Seabold all the way to Lincoln?

HC: There were school buses. At first, when we were at Olympic, they were kind of primitive. They had, like, chicken wire on each side of this thing. But first grade at Olympic, on the first day of school Akio Suyematsu and I shared a desk. Then they arranged people around so it wasn't quite that crowded. When we got to Winslow one of the first friends I made was Jerry Nakata, and also Hana Minichi came from Olympic, and Sada, and Sakasa Sakuma, Mitsu, Lefty Katayama. Before we became a full fledged class, which is when we were entering seventh grade, then some scallywags from Eagledale and Pleasant Beach joined us, and from then on there was nothing holding us back. A great class. In high school, well, in school, there not being anything to do on the island, the school was my life. We lived in Seabold and later in Manzanita, but school was our world. There were sports, and there was some drama, and orchestra for a while, and that kept me pretty busy. When we graduated, Sada Omoto was our president, and God, there were some smart kids in there, Tom Kitayama, and Kete Okazaki, Mitsu, I can't think of his last name, Lefty we called him. Minami went on to become a surgical nurse and worked for the doctor who operated on President Eisenhower. Whether she was in on that I don't know, but now you talk to her and pure Texas. [Laughs] I can't recall who the rest of the Japanese kids were, but we got along famously. There wasn't much intermingling after, after school 'cause we lived so far from each other.

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HC: And then December 7th, we were visiting friends in West Seattle, and my first reaction is, what's gonna happen to me? Are they gonna put me in the army and shoot me or something? I think many of us were pretty self-centered, and as a result, didn't, didn't do what we could've done to help the Japanese. But what could we do, you know? The word had come down from on high. But the night before the evacuation, my mother took my sister and me up to say goodbye to the Kouras, a lovely family. I picked strawberries for Art, and he always tells everybody I was the slowest picker they ever had. But they were the two nice girls, Sumiko and, good lord...

HM: Sachiko?

HC: Huh? Who?

HM: Sachi?

HC: Oh yeah, Sachiko. Nice, nice boys too, but Grandma Koura, she was the character. God, she was nice. After the war, I went to visit them, and after coming off the road as a musician I had gotten onto the Stan Boreson Show, and so I guess they saw that, so when I finally got around to visiting -- I was so apologetic for not having done it sooner -- she, Grandma Koura said, "You no stranger in this house," and that made me feel very, very good. But it was a sad day when they left. I was working on the shipyard then, and nothing was being said. And I had assumed that they were going on the ferry from Winslow, and later I found it was Eagledale, and they wouldn't let us out. Probably couldn't have gotten over there anyway, but that was a bad day. So do you have any...

HM: Yes. Well, during this time, what were your parents, what was your father's occupation?

HC: He was a fisherman. He had a purse seiner, and he'd go to Alaska in the summer and return in the fall. And things were a little tough, so he changed the boat around a little bit and went down to California, went tuna fishing, so he was kind of an absentee father. But after, getting in the Depression, it was rough on everybody, and my mother and father were both Norwegian immigrants, from different parts of Norway, and my mother wanted to see her father before he died, so they scheduled a trip, but we were too late. At any rate, my mother took my sister and me to Norway. It was gonna be for a year, and then it ended up being two years. Got back, my sister couldn't speak a word of English, and I did fairly well 'cause my godfather had been sending us the Sunday funnies all that time, so I could keep my English up a little bit. Eventually I was moved, moved into class with my original classmates, and we got along pretty well -- Sada got into a fight one day, at a class picnic. [Laughs] He was mad because I had dropped an easy ball. That was out in the sand dunes at Yomote. But we, we made up. I think he was even in a play with us. In a school that small they had to utilize everybody, so I wasn't good enough to play basketball, but I played football, and our left guard was Harry Koba, who was the toughest little son of a gun in the whole league. Several of the Japanese kids shone as far as studies and so forth were concerned. In addition to Sada and Sakasa and Tom Kitayama, there was one white kid who was also very good, Earl Oliver, one of four boys, and he also distinguished himself. He got his doctorate in, I believe, chemical engineering. Sada's degree was, Dr. Omoto was, he retired as professor of art history at Michigan State University in Lansing, so, and he's a marvelous speaker. He, at our reunions, we'd always ask him to speak to us, which he did, and they, always great subjects and he laid it out so it was just perfect. I was thinking of something Italian, but it has alluded me.

HM: While your dad was out fishing, did you also have a part time job or, some kids would work on the farm to help their, their family, did you have another job to help?

HC: Well, I picked strawberries and then I chopped wood, chopped a lot of wood. And I also chopped a finger, so, but there I must admit to some laziness, and I discovered jazz music, or big band jazz, and that was the beginning of the end. It still is going on. So my mother was pretty soft on us. Both my mother and father were more interested in serious music, the classics and all that, but I never took to that. What, what is another question you might have?

HM: Pardon?

HC: What is another question you might have?

HM: Do you remember anything about the FBI coming to the island and rounding up some of the Isseis?

HC: No.

HM: Were you aware of anything like that going on?

HC: I think towards the end of that I had some inkling of that, and I remember thinking, boy, it's pretty serious. In retrospect, I know it must've been very tough, all the things that happened, but they were such strong people they didn't let outward feelings or appearances change. As for people at Manzanar, I did send some music magazine to Peter Ohtaki, and I guess I must've thought I'd done my good deed.

HM: Did you keep up a correspondence with anyone while they were in, were detained?

HC: No. I was an avid reader of the Review, and one time I did write a letter to the editor when it was said that some people didn't want the Japanese to come back, and I was out in the Pacific at the time, but that made me a little angry. I think I've seen a copy of that letter in some scrapbooks, which makes me feel good.

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HM: So you were pretty busy yourself during the war, in the navy, then. Where were you stationed?

HC: Well, when I went in the navy I went to boot camp and I did a double thing there and then went to radio school next to Treasure Island, got shipped down to Elysian Park and a refresher course in radio in the navy armory there. Then got shipped up to Pleasanton, which is inland from Oakland, and finally they gave us orders to get a, get in a flat top as passengers, and they gave us a ride to Hawaii. Put us in a school there, a tent cabin, open on all sides and they'd roll down tarps when it rained. And finally got down to, went down to navy yard, scrubbed the bottom of LSTs for a while, and then finally placed aboard a communications ship, which meant, the communications ship was very interesting. I don't know if you, if it's of any interest, but it's interesting to me. When a troop transport, big one, a C3 hold, was completed in Brooklyn navy yard, after they launched that they move right back in, tore out all the troop compartments and everything, and installed radio equipment, and also staterooms because this is the ship that's gonna be a command ship on evasions, invasions. So then each invasion was the navy and then the Marines, and the, the navy, I mean the Marine General was Howlin' Mad Turner, no, Howlin' Mad... Howlin' Mad, anyway, and his officers, which I guess you would call his headquarters company, said they needed staterooms for those officers and also for the admiral. I was with Admiral Turner, Richmond Kelly Turner, and we finally got ready to go.

In the first invasion I was on was the Marianas, Saipan, Guam, and Tinian. And the second, and I think we had a new ship then, with more equipment, or at least since, the next invasion was Iwo, and after that was over we had a little rest and then went into Okinawa. And finally got back to Guam and the navy, in the meantime, for Iwo, the navy had, it was going pretty good for them, publicity wise, so they had a lot of the big time correspondents aboard, and that's what the extra cabins were for. And as a matter of fact, we were the first ship to have a teletype aboard. Up until then the receiving antenna and the transmitting antenna were miles apart because of the power generated by the transmitting, somehow they overcame that, but they decided to use that, not for navy traffic, but for the correspondents' stories. And I was the first one to stand the watch on a teletype, and among my accomplishments, I sent out the story about the flag being raised on Iwo Jima Isle. That's no claim for fame, I tell you, but it was interesting.

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HC: Came back to the island, I think maybe Sam and Kay Nakao were back, and I saw them. And Kay's best friend was Eve Nyegard Bournes, and Eve could make all the Norwegian cookies, Christmas cookies, and she taught Kay, and she got to be real good. But it was strange, go into her kitchen and she was making, and I remember, it's a cookie named "fattigmann," and it was in a big frying pan, deep fat, I guess you call it, and she was turning these things with chopsticks. [Laughs] And I thought that was kind of funny. I got into school in January of '46, and soon as school was out I was dragged along over to Spokane with some guys that were gonna form a band. And it ended up I was away from Seattle for four years, and first of which was University of Idaho, had a blast, and then I went east, and then went into the Deep South. It was good to get out of Chicago in February, I tell you. And just about every summer we were able to work our way out to the Pacific Northwest to get away from that damn heat down there. I finally came home 1950 sometime, piddled around with music. I didn't have the background or the will in it to go get a real job. Went to Alaska for five years and couldn't shake the music thing, so I came back and from then on I did get a job and music was an avocation, but that allowed us to keep the job.

HM: What instrument did you play? I'm curious.

HC: Bass fiddle, and I also sang. Still do. The gal who kept the class together, her maiden name is Myrtle Schmidt, and they lived in a brick house on the west end of High School Road, very nice house. And she was a good student. She became a legal secretary and probably one of the world's greatest organizers. She tried to organize things that nobody wanted organized, but she would send out letters throughout the year and we kind of kept in touch with each other that way. Myrt was a, was good. She passed away a couple years ago up in Port Angeles. Actually, it was at their summer place in Indianola.

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HM: Do you remember what the, the climate was during the war on the island, or were you away at that time?

HC: During the evacuation?

HM: During the evacuation.

HC: I was on the island. I was working at the shipyard by then. I had started working out of high school for the Austin Company, which built naval insulations among which was the naval radio station at Fort Ord, so, and then somebody said there was more money down at the shipyard, so I switched and stayed there until I went in the navy. It was, it was a strange thing, I had tried doing lists because I thought that was the thing to do, but they hadn't completed enough boot camps to handle everybody, so I had to wait 'til I got drafted, and I was able to be drafted into the navy. I remember going on a bus to Spokane, went through Moses Lake and I had heard that the Koba boys were there, but there was no way I could get to see them.

HM: What was the climate like on the island in the general, general population, and did the Woodwards make a difference or have an influence on how people thought?

HC: Oh yeah. Definite, definite... we would get, he would print stories about the nudist. What was his name?

HM: Skyler?

HC: Yeah. Just infuriated me, but Paul Ohtaki did a great job of writing back about events in the camp. I'm sorry he just passed away. I saw him last year when he was up here.

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HM: How often are your class reunions, and who comes?

HC: Well, I don't mean to sound facetious, but we have a reunion every week of people on the island. Now there are about four people in Seattle area that can't make it over for, and there's one in Bellingham and one in British Columbia, guy named Bill Beaton, but Earl Hanson, Sylvan Munch, Jim Johansson, and occasionally Carmen, Carmen Berry -- she was a Rereicich -- we get together every Thursday for a cup of coffee over at Central Market. Jerry used to be in on that, too. But it's a good, good group of people. Sylvan at this time is up in Bellingham. He missed lunch yesterday, but that's, he's up there for the graduation from high school of his first great granddaughter. God, that, isn't that, he's our age, you know? To have a great granddaughter, it's unbelievable. I was talkin' about Reeves and Jerry. Reeves Moran, he was wounded in the Battle of the Bulge. I think a piece of shrapnel hit him in the butt or something. But there was something between he and Gerald that was something nice to see, and Reeves lived up on Orcas for many of those years. He had also worked as an accountant at Medical Lake and up at Western, Western State? In Burlington or somewhere up there.

HM: Monroe?

HC: But then he left there and moved, inherited a home from his aunt, one of the Morans, but Reeves would come down quite often, and any time of day or night he'd fall in with Joe. But their friendship was great. Jim Johansson had an experience, the war was over and he was a navigator on some kind of a ship, and they were in Tokyo and he looked down from the bridge, down on the dock, and there was somebody, a Hideaki, so they had, they toured the whole thing and stole a jeep somewhere and had a good time. Hideaki Nakamura, his sister was in our class, Yukiko. She's doing very well health wise. I thought it was great that, while they were gone, that a few people somewhat took care of their farms. Arnold Raber was the one that helped the Kouras. I don't know the names of anybody else, but they were up in my neck of the woods.

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HM: You're doing a wonderful job for someone who says he couldn't remember. [Laughs] How do you feel about the memorial that is happening now? What would you like to --

HC: That's, that's great. I've been on some of the meetings, but the, whatever the government, can't think of it now, but I wasn't in on any of the planning or anything like that, but I was just there in support, I guess. But there were some interesting meetings, and I've been to a couple events over there, even read a poem at one of these, one of these doings that had been written by, it'll come back to me, but the poem was entitled "The Saddest Day of My Life," and it was written by a younger sister of one of my classmates, Alice... but that was a nice affair. And I think one or two of these meetings was the ex governor, Chinese fellow, and one where the governor's husband stood up for her. But I haven't been over there for a while, but the bridges and the small buildings that they built were beautiful, beautifully built. And there's quite a road down into the property. I'll have to go over again here now, before too long.

HM: What would you like others to know about this period in history and how it has affected you, Bainbridge, and your Japanese American friends?

HC: I think I schooled my son pretty well, and my wives, so that they understood our friendships. I think it's probably advanced to the point where I feel like it, it'll be a must see place on Bainbridge Island for friends who come over. I'm not gonna ride over there today, but in the next week or two maybe I can get over there. Three weeks. I play at a jazz festival in two weeks, and that takes Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Yeah. Paul Ohtaki, I mean Peter Ohtaki, he had quite a sense of humor, and I suppose ten or fifteen years ago my third wife went to work for him. She was in the travel business. She was blonde and cute and Peter liked cute blonde ladies. [Laughs] And she wanted to be, get in on his best side, so she asked him, "Are you from Tokyo, Mr. Ohtaki?" He says, "No, I'm from Ireland." "Ireland? With a name like Ohtaki?" He says, "Yeah, Bainbridge Ireland." [Laughs] I had run across him several times after war, one time in Anchorage. At the time he was selling freight for Northwest Airlines. Had him to dinner, it was a good meeting. Reeves Moran was also very friendly and visited, was it Sakuma, that had the farms up in Mount Vernon?

HM: The Sakumas.

HC: Yeah, Reeves would visit with them quite often. Reeves's widow lives on the far end of, what's the name of the road that goes north out of Rolling Bay?

HM: Is that Madison you're talking about?

HC: No.

HM: Up north, oh, Sunrise Drive?

HC: Yeah. She lives off of that, has a nice view of the, she's not doing too well right now. Amazing girl, one of the great caregivers of the world.

Off camera: So Hal, you served in, during some of the great battles in the Pacific against the Japanese on this, this radio ship.

HC: Yeah.

Off camera: Did you tell anybody at the time that you had friends who were Japanese American?

HC: Yeah, I think I did. I knew they weren't out there, so I have, I may have gotten word somehow that some of them were serving as interpreters and so forth. That's about it.

HM: I think you did a wonderful job.

HC: Thank you.

HM: Yes, just excellent.

Off camera: Is there anything else you want to say?

HC: Thanks for the opportunity.