Densho Digital Archive - Homer Yasui Interview I (denshovh-yhomer-01-0025)

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MR: When your brother Min was in jail, did he describe the experience to you, and did he have visitors, and how did he spend his days?

HY: He was a prolific letter writer, and fortunately for us, my sister, my youngest sister Yuka is a prolific letter writer too. They're both very good at it, and so they did change letters, oh, at least once a week. And so we have a, not a platter, but a lot of letters both ways. They're minor copies, of course, from my sister Yuka and Min, and so maybe a hundred letters in total, and this is over nine months' time. So in answer to the question did he have visitors, that was limited because remember he was in the Western Defense Command in Portland, Oregon, and they're no Japanese, essentially no Japanese in, there are exceptions in this area, in the Western Defense Command, so he had no Japanese visitors. But what he did have, he had Caucasian visitors, and one of them was Cora and Buddy Oliver who was a, Buddy Oliver, well, they were both educators, and he was a principal at Westport High School, and he got to know Min through a good friend of, one of his former students, Ron Shiozaki. So he and Cora Oliver would come and visit him and bring him snacks. In the beginning, they wouldn't even let him do that. And then later on, Helen Topping who was, I think she was with the Quakers or something, she came to visit Min. And there was a Chinese couple that used to visit because Chinese were not excluded, so they'd come and visit him. But as far as Japanese Americans or family, no with one exception. When Choppy was going to Montana, he came through Portland, and he stopped off here. I don't know how he did that, but he did see Min at the jail. There's a letter to that effect. God, how'd he arrange that, but he did. And this is in the Western Defense Command on the way to Great Falls. Otherwise, it was letter writing through Yuka because I have one or two to three, but it was through Yuka. Yuka is really a Boswell for Min really. And she, he wrote poems. He wrote, oh, some of these poems are bad. I mean I don't mean they're crude or anything like that, but bad poetry. [Laughs] But the interesting thing, one of them is pretty famous. It's called the, "That Damn Fence." Now some people say, well, that's anonymous, and I say well, maybe it's anonymous because Min used to send copies of this poem to Yuka, but the way he'd send is he'd type them, and he'd type his name, Min Yasui. He didn't sign his name, he'd typed them. So Yuka has oh, dozens or more of these poems, all like "Soliloquy to a Christmas at Minidoka" and "That Damn Fence" and a dozen or more poems. And one of them is "That Damn Fence," and it's verbatim what's in the books. And that's why Yuka says, "Well, it doesn't make sense that he'd send a bunch of poems and one of them was written by somebody else, would it, and with his name on, typed?" So I said, "Well, yeah that's a very persuasive argument." I'd say, "Yeah, that's reasonable that Min did write it, but no proof." So he did a lot of that, but he spent all kinds of time. You know, this guy was really always writing, and I guess it runs in the family because I do that a lot too.

MR: Are the letters also in the Historical Society collection?

HY: Well, no. The originals are, my sister has in the original writing. I have copies, so I don't know what I'm going to do with that. You know, I'm getting along in years, and I think probably, we'll probably either destroy them or maybe turn them over to the Oregon Historical Society.