Densho Digital Archive - Shigeya Kihara Interview (denshovh-kshigeya-01-0008)

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gky: Let's go to Minnesota. What was it, what was your reception there like? Do you remember the, do you remember, for example, the day that you drove into Minnesota and unloaded your car at a, at the hotel?

SK: There's no problem at all. The stage had been set by Governor Stassen when he assured Colonel Rasmussen that the state of Minnesota would welcome Japanese American students. He assembled the power structure of the Twin Cities, St. Paul and Minneapolis, and especially the newspaper publisher and editor, and the chamber of commerce, the Red Cross, the USO, and the Bar Association, and he described what was going to happen. And he said, "I want all of the state of Minnesota, the people of St. Paul and Minneapolis, to welcome these American soldiers who are going to stay at Camp Savage, and anything that comes up, just let me personally or Colonel Rasmussen know and we'll take care of the problem." So the whole state, which was not racially, racially oriented anyway, welcomed us in St. Paul, in Minneapolis, at Camp Savage. There was one incident when Tad Yamada and Paul Tekawa, who when they drove into Minneapolis were ready for a drink, so they stopped at a bar and they wanted to have some booze. The bartender said, "Sorry, I can't serve you." And Paul and Tad said, "Why?" He says, "In the state of Minnesota we are not permitted to serve Indians." So Paul and Tad said, "We're not Indians. We're Japanese, and we're here to teach at a school at Camp Savage." "Oh," the bartender says, "okay, I understand," and made out the drinks. [Laughs]

gky: What was, physically, what did the camp look like?

SK: When we pulled into the highway along the Red River and the Mississippi, excuse me, the Minnesota river, we saw some beautiful buildings to our right, tile, red tile and tan walls. I said, oh, this is the new school. We're jumping up and down we're so happy. But we found out that it was a Masonic home, not the new school, so we drove down the highway and finally we came to the town of Savage, and right adjacent to the town of Savage was the old folks' home. It was an abandoned old folks' home. Grass was three feet high. The buildings were dilapidated, the roads were rutted. And we realized that this was our new home, and we were in a state of shock. And we were told that our living quarters were not ready and that we were to proceed to the city of Minneapolis and stay at the Curtis Hotel in downtown Minneapolis, and that the instructors would be picked up by army bus each day to go to work and then come back in the evening. So Sumi Aiso and my wife, Aya, lived in the hotel for one month, getting their food at the delicatessen downstairs, and they just had a ball. They enjoyed it. They thought Minnesota was gonna be a wonderful experience for them. In one month's time our living quarters in the residential area of Camp Savage were readied. Sewer lines had been put into the small bungalows. Stoves, iron potbellied stoves had been set up for heat. Water lines were laid out for each of the cabins. And we got there, it was quite a difference from Camp, from the Curtis Hotel downtown. It was a primitive sort of existence right alongside the Minnesota River, and for the first time in our lives as the evening approached we could see lights toward the river. We wondered what are, what is that? And we found out that they were fireflies in the marshes along the Minnesota River, so it's the first time in our life that we had seen fireflies.

gky: I'm a little bit confused. I've heard that the Camp Savage, before you occupied it was a California Conservation Camp --

SK: No, not California, Minnesota.

gky: I'm sorry, Minnesota.

SK: Civilian.

gky: Civilian, yeah. And I've also heard that it was an old folks' home. I've heard that it was an old men's home. What was it?

SK: Actually at one time it was a CCC camp, but then it closed up and it became an old folks' home, an old men's home, old men's home. And that activity had been terminated and in May, June of 1942 it was unoccupied, and so our cadre of ten enlisted instructors had to go in, chase the hobos out, cut the grass, and get it ready to utilize as a school. And on June the 1st, 1942, about a hundred and eighty students reported, and the original faculty of four, plus four from the Presidio, augmented by ten enlisted instructors, were the faculty that started the school at Camp Savage.