Interview with Bill N. Chadbourne, USAF, Retired
_______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Interview, Part I
"Bill Chadbourne,
A month after Pearl Harbor, I was 8 years old. I remember driving with my parents past the Santa Anita Race Track in California.
The huge parking lot was covered with black tar-papered shacks the size of large chicken coops.
My mom choked up and said it was temporary housing for Japanese Americans headed for desert internment camps."
"How come your mother choked up?"
"She used to buy our vegetables from Japanese truck farmers and she got to know some of them pretty well."
Interview, Part II
"Did your mother ever see them again?"
"No, but we were displaced by a Japanese family who bought the home we rented and they made a lettuce packing plant in the garage. My family moved into a tiny garage apartment because of the housing shortage, ironically, 5 miles from the Santa Anita race track.
Ten years after that, I was stationed in Japan where I met and married a Japanese woman. In the following 20 years, military assignments put us in many different houses, but it was always our family home, just as it must have been for those Japanese families who made a home, despite their hardships."
Interview, Part I
"Bill Chadbourne,
A month after Pearl Harbor, I was 8 years old. I remember driving with my parents past the Santa Anita Race Track in California.
The huge parking lot was covered with black tar-papered shacks the size of large chicken coops.
My mom choked up and said it was temporary housing for Japanese Americans headed for desert internment camps."
"How come your mother choked up?"
"She used to buy our vegetables from Japanese truck farmers and she got to know some of them pretty well."
Interview, Part II
"Did your mother ever see them again?"
"No, but we were displaced by a Japanese family who bought the home we rented and they made a lettuce packing plant in the garage. My family moved into a tiny garage apartment because of the housing shortage, ironically, 5 miles from the Santa Anita race track.
Ten years after that, I was stationed in Japan where I met and married a Japanese woman. In the following 20 years, military assignments put us in many different houses, but it was always our family home, just as it must have been for those Japanese families who made a home, despite their hardships."