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FC: How did the white communities around -- how did Cody and Powell respond to presence of camp and internees wandering in and out of town?

PT: Well, I'd like to respond to that. When we attended the symposia, three-day symposia in Powell, Wyoming, a few months back, it was very clear from the comments made by some of the speakers, Velma Kesell, a nurse at Heart Mountain was one of them, and the, another person that worked in the camps who was Senator Simpson's brother, they all, two things were very obvious. All the local population were very happy to find work that paid above the prevailing wages, not only to build the camp but to work at the camps. Also because due to the shortage of labor, local farmers like Jim Hart, who ran a potato farm there and is retired today in Powell, the... and when I talk to him, he and Velma recently, they both told me that the atmosphere of Powell at the time was that, was really less hostile than it was out here on the Pacific Coast that led to our internment. And as a matter of fact, there was a lot of good will there and it's only those who, who identified us with Japanese from Japan that called us "Japs" as has happened. But the overall environment in the local community, while not supportive, was more close to neutral than being hostile.

[Interruption]

FC: -- further east, it felt quite different.

KK: Oh, you know, most of the people had never seen a real Japanese person in person so they didn't have this ingrained mindset that they were supposed to look at us a certain way. And so as Paul said, they were either neutral or they didn't have that hostility to begin with. And I found that going to Wisconsin University, that most of the people were very open-minded and I didn't find any instances of personal antagonism like that.

PT: There were isolated cases, Jim Hart the potato farmer that I referred to, told me something very interesting which I realized when I visited the cemetery in Powell to visit the gravesites of seven Issei who had died in Heart Mountain, and that I realized that there were Japanese living in that area, and Jim Hart told me that there were two Japanese farmers with families living in that area that were in Powell that were very well- respected. You must remember that Powell today with a population under five thousand probably had a smaller population at that time. So it was a very small, rural population but he did cite an incident that happened. He and other farmers were very glad to hire Nisei like us to work in the sugar beet fields and the potato fields, and he had hired six or seven Nisei at a time to harvest his potatoes. And he would dig them up with his tractor and they would walk behind with these heavy sacks picking up potatoes. And he related an incident that happened where a car stopped and he found, when Mr. Hart came out from his house, he noticed that all the Nisei were hiding behind the potato sacks, and he says, "What's going on?" and they said, "Well, the man in the car is shooting at us." So he walked over to the, started to walk towards the car and it moved down the roadway and he caught up with it. And the passenger got out of the car and swung at him with a whiskey bottle and he dodged that and he said he had leather gloves on because he'd been driving a tractor, and he decked him. And the driver then came out and was going to attack Mr. Hart's truck driver who was there and Mr. Hart gave him the same treatment and Mrs. Hart called the Powell police department and they came, came out and incarcerated the two men who had probably been drinking. But those kinds of incidents were very, really isolated incidences.

FC: So for the most... so the relations were fairly congenial then, on the whole, rather than tense and hostile.

KK: Yeah, when you get to know people, that's the way it usually is.

PT: Beyond that, I mean, I'm not sure if congenial is the proper word. It's just that they didn't know us and we didn't know them. But a lot of internees went to Powell and Cody to shop and so there was an economic interest there and they got to know some of us, and that did make a difference, because I worked in a farm in Worland and worked on a hothouse in Thermopolis and worked on a sugar beet ranch in Powell, and so they were glad to have labor available because most of the young men had been drafted to the war effort.

KK: The high school used to have basketball games and football games and baseball games against these teams from outside.

FC: Against other high school teams from Powell and Cody?

KK: Uh-huh, uh-huh.

FC: Wow. That's interesting.

KK: Yeah. And there were some apprehensions at first but young people being young people, you know.

FC: Did the teams leave camp, or would other teams come to camp to play?

KK: Other teams came to camp. I don't recall any going out.

PT: I don't think so.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1995, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.