<Begin Segment 16>

TI: I also wanted to go back to something else you mentioned. So you talked about how after the war started, people were coming to Salt Lake City to resettle, so you started, you opened up this little office in Japantown with, to help people find housing and employment. I'm trying to understand better who those people were coming to Salt Lake City. Were these during that "voluntary evacuation" period when they could leave the coast and come to, and come inland? Are you talking about those people that were coming to Salt Lake City?

JK: I don't know their purpose except to find a place to live, more than anything else.

TI: But where were they coming from? Were they coming from the coast, or were they coming from a camp?

JK: They were coming from the coast. In fact, there was one couple, evidently she, this woman was a lawyer, and she came and she came to my office with this fellow. And they drove up in their great big car, and they had a colored fellow as their chauffeur, that had driven up. And I told her, "Well, conditions are such that you won't find anyplace to live around here," as much as we looked around. But so she says, well, she'll look around. But then later I found out that she had gone down to Phoenix, she just left town. And I told the Shigekawas about her, and she was a lawyer in Los Angeles, and they knew her. But that's the last I heard of her.

TI: Because when I did some research, it showed that about 1,500 people from the West Coast settled during that "voluntary evacuation" period in Utah. So quite a few people came into Utah, so I think those are the people you're talking about. But there was something interesting, too, in the archives. The governor at this time was Governor Maw?

JK: Yeah.

TI: And he received a letter from one of the chapters of the JACL, local ones, and they were concerned that if too many West Coast Japanese came to Salt Lake City, that would pose problems. There was concern about that from a JACL chapter. Was that a common, kind of, sentiment?

JK: Well, I didn't, I really didn't feel that there were that many people coming in, although lot of the evacuees that came in, they settled on farms and they settled in areas where they could find employment in Japanese restaurants. And many of 'em settled in the areas out in Clearfield and in Roy and in Ogden. And in fact, when they had their big meeting in Ogden about six months ago, they had a big anniversary meeting there. And I went down to that meeting and I met so many people there that are, they are the progeny of the evacuees that had come out. They said they lived in Ogden for three or four years, but they don't remember too much about it because they were either born in Ogden, or they lived there for, or they'd come out and lived there for three or four years, then they went back to the coast.

TI: But I was just wondering, though, but then before all that happened, just a feeling from the, from the Japanese Americans who were already in Utah. Were there concerns about maybe too many Japanese coming from the coast? Because I think the letter mentioned how the Japanese in Utah have essentially been kind of, have done a good job of, through their work and connections, have established a really strong reputation. And so they were concerned about the West Coast Japanese. Do you just, I mean, not to say that it didn't work out, because I know they came and worked out, but I was just wondering about the tension.

JK: Well, I don't think there was that much tension there because there wasn't enough, there weren't that many people coming out, especially in this area. I think a great many of 'em went to, like to Denver and Omaha and Chicago. There were a good number of 'em that settled in areas back east, and never even went, returned to the West Coast.

TI: Okay, I was just curious about that.

[Interruption]

<End Segment 16> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.