Densho Digital Archive - Ted Hachiya Interview (denshovh-hted

<Begin Segment 19>

MP: So tell me about when everybody was in the assembly center or in Minidoka and you were here, this Japanese guy walking around town, I mean, didn't people sort of wonder what --

TH: Oh yeah. Well, the people in the neighborhood wondered a lot of the time.

MP: Did they say anything?

TH: No. Most of them didn't say anything. They were curious. They would ask me about some things, but then they left well enough alone.

MP: Tell me the Tex story.

TH: This guy was a bootlegger. He was serving drinks out of a storefront, operating a bootleg place, but he used to threaten me all the time, and I told him just to, "Cut it out. I'm going to throw you out in the street." He says, "You and who else?" and he was a bigger man than I was. And one day I got so mad, I did throw him on top of the hood of the car, and he rolled out on Columbia Street and a car nearly run him over. I was scared to death. But he got to be a best friend, you know. He'd find somebody make a remark, you know, he tell him shut up. And he'd always ask me in for a drink. I guess he knew I didn't drink, but he offered it to me anyway.

MP: Did you ever get called names?

TH: Sure. They called me a "Jap." I didn't know I was a "Jap" until I was in the eighth grade in grade school. I got along fine with most everybody.

MP: And what happened in the eighth grade?

TH: A guy called me a "Jap," and I said, "What's that?" And he said, "That's you, you yellow Jap," and then got into, that's the guy that, well, that's the guy, one of the guys that really made me look like I was beat. He bloodied my nose and got me two black eyes. I know his name too. It's Jessie Renalt. He turned out to be a professional boxer, and he ran the, a beer tavern down there on Third and Burnside. He was kind of a bodyguard to the owner there. He was a tough monkey. But I had him pinned down with judo, and I was banging away at him when the principal came and pulled me off of him. I looked at the other guy. He had hardly any marks on him, just little red welts. I don't know. I don't think I pounded anybody so hard, but he was tough.

MP: So did you, you knew that was, I mean, did, when he called you "Jap" and he said that's you and you got in a fight?

TH: Yeah.

MP: And so did you, what were you feeling? If you said you didn't know, I mean, what did that mean, "Jap," to you?

TH: Well, "Jap" used to be used in a derogatory way. If I guy didn't like you or he wanted to call you a name, that's what he called you.

MP: Whether you were Japanese or not?

TH: I didn't realize that I was a "Jap."

MP: What about the Chinese? Did they get mixed up in all that? Were they sensitive --

TH: Well, they were afraid because it's hard to distinguish between Chinese and Japanese. I boarded with a Chinese family that owned the Rice Bowl, you know, restaurant there next to the Capitol Theater. I had my dinner there every night. And the old man, he brought in a lapel pin that said "I am Chinese," and he told me to wear it, and I, I just thanked him, but I didn't, I didn't accept it. I said, "No. I'm not Chinese."

MP: And he wanted to wear, he wanted you to wear the pin because --

TH: To get, for protection.

MP: Was that common?

TH: They did it down in Chinatown, everybody down there that I know of. I heard that they all had pins to identify themselves. They were innocent, you know. They didn't do anything. But you hear Oriental, you look like a "Jap" to me, and bang, some of them got beat up. That's what I heard. I never saw the actual beat up.

MP: So, and then there, so like here, Ted is walking around town, and there were a few other people who you told me worked at the listening station. Can you describe that?

TH: Oh, yeah. I found out... yeah. Before I evacuated with Dad, I found out that some of the people that were, they were actually Kibeis. They're born here but raised in Japan, and they were hired to listen to this shortwave radio that came over from Japan, and it was located in the Hollywood Theater Building upstairs. I didn't actually go there, but that's, they told me that's where they worked. And what they did was take the Japanese and write it in English. It's called romaji. So they, and they send it on to Washington DC.

MP: And they were picking up Japanese transmissions?

TH: Yes.

MP: War transmissions?

TH: That's right.

MP: Plans?

TH: I don't even know what they were picking up, but they were picking it up, and it was vital to the war they tell me, and I only found out because they were renting a house from a friend of ours, you know. I just happened to go to camp one day. He says, "Hey, will you do me a favor? Go and look and see if the house is being taken care of," so I did. It was a house in Montavilla.

MP: They really needed you. They needed somebody outside the camp that could, you know.

TH: I suppose. Well, there were others, but they were confined to a hospital, you know, like Bobby Wadi was in the, I called him Marumoto, but it's, she was married. I forgot her married name, but she just passed away too about a year ago. But they were up in the tuberculosis section up in OHSU. It wasn't called that, but it was the hospital up there. They had a tuberculosis ward up there. A lot of Japanese people were susceptible to tuberculosis because of the way they lived. They lived on the ground floor, and then there was no air circulation, or they were actually mixing with the, the low class people, you know, in downtown.

MP: Right. So that would make them susceptible to catching --

TH: Yeah, catching. Tuberculosis is easy to, it's very contagious in certain stages, and I know lots of people ended up in the sanitarium. My own sister-in-law was in the sanitarium for about three months. But now, they have a fast way of curing them. But I understand the tuberculosis, the strain they're getting now is getting more resistant through, you know, the antibiotics.

MP: So there were these, so there was a whole Japanese ward of, is it in tuberculosis at OHSU?

TH: No. There were only people that had admitted it and then applied to doctors, you know, that turned them in.

MP: Admitted it?

TH: Yeah. But there were a lot of people walking around with tuberculosis, known tuberculars.

MP: Were they in the susceptible phase or, I mean, what --

TH: Well, this I couldn't tell you, but I know there was a Mr. Miyoshi. He had a hotel next to ours, and his wife was tubercular and he was tubercular because he... but he wouldn't go into a sanitarium.

MP: Did a lot of Japanese people die of tuberculosis?

TH: I don't know about that. They were the older people, the first generation, but I know a lot of them were in and out of the hospital. They didn't let you out until you were considered cured. I guess there's certain stages that tuberculosis is very contagious, and for some reason, the Japanese people, Eskimos, the South Sea Islanders, and the black people were very susceptible. Like our people, not too many of them get infantile paralysis. We're not as susceptible as the Caucasians are.