Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: Ted Hamachi Interview
Narrator: Ted Hamachi
Interviewer: Kirk Peterson
Location: West Covina, California
Date: March 4, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-hted-01-0008

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RP: So where did you attend high school?

TH: The first year, before Pearl Harbor, I was a freshman at Covina High School. We started in September, as a freshman, and so December 7th came and Pearl Harbor, we still continued to go to high school 'til about Easter of 1942. During that time, it was sort of hard to go to school because you're a focal of attention. I think I wrote in the paper, we used to debate in the general science class about what's going to happen to me and stuff. And the debates were pretty strong. That's where this science teacher told me that it was sort sentimental for him because he of German descent in World War I, he was born in the early 1900s.

RP: Did he express some...

TH: He sort of sympathized with what I was going through.

RP: Can you give us a little more flavor of the debate? You were talking about debating what was going to happen to you.

TH: There was a girl that sort of stuck up for me, and she says, "He's an American, he's not the enemy." They knew what was going on, that citizens are not crucified as the enemy, and so the hatred that the media probably stirred it up more. They made it interesting reading and the people took sides. So if you go back in history, today whoever gets the attention is the enemy really. If you belong to, if you are descendants of that enemy, you're also part of them, you're not part of America, that's the way even today I get still criticized as being from Japan. The people don't associate you with being a citizen. They look at your face and say you're still Japanese.

[Interruption]

TH: Today you think back, and it's sort of like a fairy tale that we did have to get forced to leave, but it did happen and I think it was... it was General DeWitt saying that, "Once a Jap, always a Jap." Something like that doesn't help the situation. I wished at that time that more other nationalities had come to the rescue, or debated against them, or, but it never happened but there were some kind people, like I remember real distinctly, Ted and Hazel Roberts that owned a dairy in West Covina, they did everything they could to not prevent us to go.

RP: Like what? Do you remember specific things?

TH: Well, this couple owned a dairy and they didn't have any children. I don't know how it happened but, Mrs. Hazel Roberts became friends of the Japanese people and then she started to get to know, I guess it might have been through the dairy, I don't know, but she befriended the Japanese girls and she started like a Girl Scouts. But she called it the Cherry Blossom Girls Reserve. And the reason probably she wanted to help was the older Niseis that were started to go to high school and stuff didn't know anything about their menstruation, periods and stuff, and their Issei mothers would never coach them, teach them different things. This became a must if you were a Japanese girl, you were asked to join them. Those that refused, there was no hard feelings then. She combed the area and both of my sisters were members of the Cherry Blossom Girls Reserve. After we came back from the camps, we did honor them. All the Niseis got together and we were even on TV because of this gesture that we did to honor them. But they later on continued to help the Japanese people and Ted and Hazel Roberts, later on moved to Carlsbad, California, along the coast. They were instrumental in helping the families in Okinawa. They sent goats here from America to Okinawa. So throughout their life, they did help us quite a bit.

RP: Did they have a religious affiliation as well?

TH: That I can't remember today. If I say I remember, I don't have any confidence in saying that.

RP: What I was thinking about was the possibility that they were maybe Quakers or other people that would have, by the fact of their conscience, have more tendency to speak out and support.

TH: Oh. This happened before the war though. They were friends of the Japanese community way before the war.

RP: Were there any other people like the Roberts that you recall who sort of took you into the community?

TH: Well, I think this Charles Kranz was friends of the Japanese people and they did all they could to help out, or hardships and stuff. They didn't back down because we were of Japanese ancestry. He taught us as a school teacher and he was also the athletic coach of all the sports. He also, because of the smallness of the school, he was also a bus driver. He bused us to and from school. On top of that, I would've never gone to a baseball game or a basketball game, he was a graduate of Whittier College, this Mr. Kranz, he had family also but I remember going by car or by bus to basketball games and other sports. I think we even went to the L.A. Angels when they were in Los Angeles and we sat in a place called the "Knothole Gang," a special, a bunch of kids. That was real good.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.