Densho Digital Archive - Clyde Taylor Interview (denshovh-tclyde-01-0007)

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RP: What are, what can you tell us about the community of Big Pine?

CT: That's probably the same. Very, very independent. Every person was his own person and his own mind and his own everything. I think we had one Chinese guy, Wing Fu, one Mexican family, the Herreras, and the Indians most generally lived on the reservation above town. I don't know if it's still there. It wasn't a regular, regular verified, regulated reservation, but they just sort of stayed there for years and years. I don't think it's there anymore. And then down south of town, south, they had their, where they built their houses and gave them I don't know how much land, deeded it to them. So, but at that time the Indians could not drink in a bar. They could drink, illegally, and they always did drink illegally, and if there was a football game or a baseball game they'd be the last ones to leave whoopin' and hollerin' down at wherever the site was. And everybody expected it and nobody thought anything of it. That's just the way it was. But nobody, if you, you bought... it was like if you bought beer for an Indian it was like an adult buying beer for a juvenile here. Same thing. But that, when I came out of the service that had changed in '53 I believe. Then they could go into the bar and drink.

RP: Can you give us a feeling of the attitudes in Big Pine...

CT: Towards the Japanese?

RP: Towards the Japanese Americans and the, the camp at Manzanar?

CT: Well, when Manzanar was first built it was sort of like everybody was happy because it provided jobs for quite a few people, the local people. And then the Japanese moved in. Nobody thought too much of it as far as I knew, as far as I could remember, I don't know. I know there's lots of big prejudice because there's people gettin' hurt in the war. And then like as far as the game goes, I think there were a lot of people against it. But I think the kids more or less wanted to do it, us guys, us girls, guys, boys, whatever. And I think that's why it got done. And I don't think there was too much opposition. But there was lots and lots of prejudice against the Japanese. If a Japanese had run down the street I wouldn't want to be him, you know, at night or in dark, or anytime. 'Cause somebody would holler or say something. And I've talked to a few Japanese after that and they were scared to go out by themselves, too. They knew it was there. That's about all I can remember.

RP: Uh-huh. In talking with you last year you, you mentioned talking about yeah, having conversations with your friends about who you wanted to get captured by.

CT: Well, that was just us young minds talking. And we would rather get captured by the Germans than the Japanese because they had the reputation of a lot of, lot of torture. The Germans, as far as we knew, didn't have that. 'Course, we knew nothing of the Holocaust or any of that. But still, if it was gonna be one or the other we'd rather be captured by the Germans. And right or wrong, probably right more than wrong, in some ways.