Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

<Begin Segment 27>

MH: When did you actually move back to Portland, and why did you move back to Portland or your parents bring you back to Portland?

GN: Well ultimately, the United States government decided that they're going to close up the camps in 1945 I believe it was, and so, gradually, word got around that we could relocate to wherever, and a number of people, not many, but a number of people decided they're not going to come back to Portland, and they elected to go to Chicago or to Denver or to New York. But for the most part, most of us that came from Portland, originated here, decided that we're going to return back to Portland. It was interesting the days preceding our departure back which was about in September back to Portland. As you look through Block 34, several of the compartments were now empty. Oh, the Suzuki family left. Oh, the Maeda group's going to leave tomorrow, and the Muramatsu people went back to Milwaukie and so forth. And so one by one, families would depart. And so my father and my mother communicated with some friends back in Portland, in particular the other Nakata family that we were in partnership with, they were already back here. And not having a home to go to was a very serious dilemma for most families, and that's why Vanport and University Homes and Saint John Woods became a part of many, many Japanese and Japanese American families. They had no hotel, they had no grocery store, they had no business, they had no income, so they went to these places that were quickly put up for the Oregon shipyards on Swan Island. We elected to go to Saint John Woods because they had small little individual houses. But before we left, for about three weeks, we had smelt, smelt and the next meal was smelt and the meal after that was smelt. And you can tell me that you could fix smelt many different ways, but it's still smelt. And so I somehow got an aversion or almost a hatred for smelt. And upon returning to Portland, yes, there'd be a smelt run on the Sandy River or the Cowlitz River, and I'd go get them and give them all to my friends because I really didn't want anything to do with smelt for quite a few years. And one time someone asked me why is that and I had to tell them it was the last few days in Minidoka. If I didn't eat smelt, I didn't eat. And so I've had really a lifetime and a half quota of smelt already.

Anyhow, we came back by train, and I have to say that even as a young boy, it was a different trip. We knew our destination. It was going home, and we're going to go home to Portland. And the window shades were not down. We could see. And when you kind of roll through the Columbia River Gorge and you see the Columbia River, you know, it's impossible to describe because you kind of know that the Willamette River that as a young boy used to throw rocks into, that's connected to the Columbia, and you're just about home. So our train pulls up at the Union Station, and we get off the track. And to step foot on the ground in Portland, it was probably just an ordinary concrete slab or whatever that's near the railroad siding there in Union Station, but it's the inner feeling that goes through you that, gee, you're now home. You're back home, and so it was a tremendous feeling. We went out to the lobby. Frank and Harry Nakata were there to greet us, welcome us home. We went out to their car, not a new car, maybe a 1938 or '39 Chevrolet. But riding from there to Saint John Woods, just seeing the Willamette River again, seeing the Burnside Bridge, just is really a feeling that's probably beyond description. So we're home and we went out to Saint John Woods and found a house and very modest rent, just had a kitchen, bathroom, and a couple of bedrooms, but it was home, and we settled in.