Densho Digital Archive - Bill Hirabayashi Interview (denshovh-hbill

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MA: And can you tell me about when you met your wife for the first time?

BH: Oh, that was the best thing in my life. [Laughs] Reverend Murphy went to Enumclaw, which was a sawmill that a lot of the Isseis worked at. And he met Mr. Uyeda, and he said, "I understand you have a daughter that's old enough to go to the ACF. How come she doesn't go to ACF?" And he said, well, Fred, that's Mr. Uyeda's son, was at the driving age, and he usually had the preference to get the car. And so Sunday nights, she had no way of getting to the ACF. So Reverend Murphy said, "I know just the fellow that can take care of that." He says, "I'll ask Bill Hirabayashi to pick up Anice and she can go, so tell her to be ready." And so that worked out fine. So I went to her place in Auburn there and I knocked on the door and Anice came out. And as fast as she came out and opened the door, the dog came out, her dog. They had two dogs, and this particular dog, they called it Poochy, was her dog. And he came out and he bit me. And that just devastated Anice, 'cause she was so embarrassed. Her mother came out there, it was just, the whole family was up in arms thinking, "Oh, my gosh," you see. But anyway, we went to the ACF, and that broke the ice for me. 'Cause Monday morning in high school, she had to come and kind of apologize. [Laughs] And before that, I had heard, but she had no... what would I say? She didn't feel the same way I felt, I guess, so there was nothing. But that broke the ice.

So then when we went to ACF and so on, then the evacuation started. My sister helped the JACL get the people onto the different trains and put family numbers for everyone. Well, one day my sister asked me kind of an unusual question. I don't know why, but she said, "Who are the family friends of the Uyedas?" And I said, "Gee, as far as I know, there's the Oyamas and Asayamas," and I started mentioning a few because she talked about them. Well, what it turned out to be is my sister did me a favor. She made sure that that family, their family friends and our family was all on the same train. [Laughs] So we went to Pinedale on the same train, and needless to say, it just got that little pilot light burning a little more and more.

So when we were in Pinedale, that's when I said to Anice, I said, "I'm going to volunteer." And I talked to George Yamada, and we said we'd both volunteer. Because Grant's in the army already, so why not get the thing over with? And so when we volunteered, they sent me, both George and myself, received a card that, 4-C. And we talked it over and we said, "Wonder what a 4-C is?" So then we wrote a letter to Kent. Kent was our draft board, and they sent us another card, no letter or nothing, just a card. And on that card, the second card said, "For the duration of the war, you are classified as an 'enemy alien.'" So I carried that with me all the time, thought, "Well, I guess the reason I'm not going to be in the army is because I'm classified as an 'enemy alien.'" But then somewhere along the line I lost that, my wallet, and I lost that. But when they transferred us from Pinedale to Tule Lake, that's when I wanted to go out of camp and earn a buck or two like everybody else was doing. But Anice said, "No, you're not going out there." I said, "Why not?" I said, "If we're going to get married, we need the money." And she said, "No," she said, "if you go out to the farms now, you're going to be labeled as an immigrant..." I mean, as a... what are they called?

MA: A migrant laborer?

BH: Yeah, a migrant help. She said, "We want to go and prove ourselves." And so we would go as far away as we could, and that's how we ended up in the Chicago area.

MA: Well, I wanted to ask you more about the 4-C, "enemy alien." And how did you feel when you received this, with your brother Grant in the military?

BH: Well, I just thought, "What are they going to do to Grant?" by that time. Because naturally, he's in the service. And then we heard from him, he was in Camp Shelby or someplace, and different camps, and it sounded like he wasn't doing anything that was of any value. Sort of a -- pardon the expression -- but a peon work is what he was doing. But then all of a sudden, things changed, and he went to, he was in the Merrill's Marauders and things had changed. By that time, Anice and I had been in Barrington, and then I got a new classification saying 1-A. And so right away, we decided, "Well, we got to do something different. And then I told my boss that I received a 1-A, and he says, "Give me the card." And he said, "We'll talk about it." So I gave him the card and I thought that was going to be taken care of, that I'd have to go in the army and Anice had to figure out what to do. Well, at that time, she was pregnant, and she decided, well, maybe she'll have to go into the camp because she can't do anything by herself in an unknown place like that. So she wrote to her sister in Hunt, Idaho, because her aunt was ill and so her family moved from Tule straight over to Minidoka so that they could help take care of her aunt's two kids and their cousins. And so as time went by and I kept doing my work, and then one day I said to my boss, I said, "I haven't heard anything more from my draft board," and he says, "You won't." I said, "Why not?" He says, "Because we need pork and beef just as much as we need bullets." And he said, "I got you a deferment." I thought, actually, my heart sank because I thought, gee, I'm not... I thought I'd be a true American and I'll do my share like everybody else. And then I was someone that didn't go into the service. My brothers all were in the service, and here I am, the only one that was deferred. But, well, that's the way things worked out.