KENT RESIDENTS DON'T WANT ANY JAPS 'EVER' TO RETURN TO VALLEY

[Photo caption]: MAYOR GRANT DUNBAR, PITCHFORK and SIGN. Jokers say it's a 'sign of the times'

Posters Tacked Up by Mayor, Business Men

Ranchers and businessmen in Kent busily tacked up signs today proclaiming, "We Don't Want Any Japs Here EVER." Pointing to their posters, they added emphatically, "that's just the way we feel."

Once populated by hundreds of Japanese truck gardeners, the community began today to protest recent statements of Dillon S. Myer, national War Relocation Authority director, that Japanese in relocation centers could be assimilated after the war.

"Kent citizens once lived side by side with the Japanese here, and Japanese treachery has been the bitterest blow to their American sportsmanship," Mayor Grant Dunbar declared.

The mayor, manager of the Grange warehouse and store for 15 years, sponsored the sign campaign himself, printing 250 posters and distributing them to persons who asked for them.

To Test Town's Reaction

"I wanted to test the town's reaction to the proposal of bringing the Japs back," Mayor Dunbar explained. Farmers who go to town to do business with him often have expressed their unwillingness to welcome back their former neighbors, and Dunbar "wanted to see how the rest of the people felt."

The Japanese community was a sore spot for landowners during the years they populated the valley, the mayor continued.

"Some left for internment camps in the country still owing several years' rent," Dunbar said. He added that Japanese farmers used concentrated fertilizer that the land was ruined for regular farming.

At the outset of war, Japanese near Kent just barely escaped acts of violence, the mayor said.

"We can't do anything about American-born Japanese who are citizens of this country, but we feel if we don't protest now, all of them will be shipped back here," Dunbar declared.

A few blocks down the street in a barber shop, Barber Bill Coulter and Chief of Police R.E. Graham echoed the same opinion.

"I never want to see another Jap," Coulter declared, giving the scissors a particular vicious snip over the chief's ear. "In the seven years I've been running this shop, I learned you just can't trust them."

Vets Don't Like Japs

Chief Graham added:

"One of the Japanese boys, serving with the United States Army, recently returned legitimately on a furlough. Within a few moments I had so many calls I practically had to form a bodyguard from him. The kids here who have been discharged from military service because of wounds and disability can't stand to see a Japanese. I don't see how a Jap could return here and live against that feeling."

Police Judge Peter Madsen also said "he hadn't any use for them." A member of the School Board 15 years, Judge Madsen said the Japanese were always industrious students and mixed well with the Americans.

"But in 1941 I knew something was coming," he declared. "Those Japanese also knew what was coming, but they didn't tell us."

Fire Chief Charles Bridges, who farms 25 acres of hay but "wouldn't ever rent an inch to the Japanese," also protested the return of the Japanese.

"My 21-year-old son, Charles, has been serving with the Coast Guard three years now," the chief said. "I don't want him to come back and meet the same people he's fought and learned to hate."

Jap Schools Protested

A rancher, applying for gasoline coupons at the ration board, said he wouldn't mind the return of some Japanese, "although the less the better."

"The Japanese have proved they can farm this land more economically than the white farmers," he said. "If we could prevent them from maintaining their own schools we could keep them from becoming so pro-Japanese."

But Mayor Dunbar, saying city dwellers would be eager for the cheapest vegetables and food, urged that the financial element be disregarded for "the principle of the situation."