David Doesn't Talk About Going; He's Used to Change

[Photo caption]: David and Harriet Ishii Play Bingo. Says your stepmother: 'You can't pack your bedclothes when that's all you have.'

The family life of little David Ishii is complicated but cozy.

Of course, you remember David. For several years he was the darling of the nurses at Swedish Hospital, the only home he knew until January, 1940.

Today David faces evacuation from the Pacific Coast, like all members of his race, alien or American-born. But if there's a Japanese boy in the world who's used to change and various living conditions, it's David.

David won't be 7 years old for a month. He is content to wait, to listen and to smile. There are many persons interested in his welfare.

Nurses Still Entranced

There are the nurses at Swedish Hospital, still as entranced by David as when they bought him his first little knitted suits and showed him proudly to visitors and patients and doctors and internes.

There are his six brothers and sisters, all older than he.

There is his stepmother, who married the children's father in 1937.

There are his "grandparents," Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Dunn, 3222 23rd Ave. W., who have provided well for little David, his stepmother and his brothers and sisters.

Dunn, proprietor of a Seattle seed company, took David's father for a younger partner years ago. Little David's Dad came to Seattle from Japan when he was about 15 years old. He died in 1939 in Japan.

[Next]-Door Neighbors

Mrs. Ishii is grateful to the Dunns for their kindness, for their training of the Ishii children, for their very home, which is next door to the Dunns. Her stepchildren are: Jack, 21, Addie, 19; William, 16; George, 13; Mary, 11; Harriet, 9, and David. The three eldest attend a Catholic church. The others attend Methodist worship with Mrs. Ishii. She believes that religious choice is strictly the business of a child himself, when he grows old enough to choose. She is a native of Bellevue. Her mother, Mrs. Mami Doi, lives at 7935 Delridge Way.

Besides all these, interested in David, there are relatives of one of the hospital nurses who made a home for David in 1940 on Vashon Island, and innumerable friends who knew David when he was a baby in the hospital, too ill to be moved.

Mrs. Ishii is not prepared for evacuation of her little brood, but she is resigned to it. She is not packed, either. She said yesterday:

"We can't think much about evacuation, we can only wait. And you can't very well pack in advance. You can't pack your bedclothes when that's all you have."

David won't say anything about it. He is content with his lot and he has confidence in all those who have taken up the task of looking out for him. If he is bored, his sisters teach him Bingo, or his mother reads to him. If he is hungry between meals, he simply trots next door to Mrs. Dunn and says:

"Grandma, feed me."

That childish demand produces results, and David Ishii finds life good.