Evacuee Camps Filthy

By VIRGINIA TAYLOR

Japanese resettlement camps in Eastern Washington are “crowded, crude, dirty, full of debris, bedbugs and other vermin,” Floyd Schmoe, a former forestry instructor, told an informal group of Mortar Board alumnae who met in Clark hall last night to discuss Japanese-American student problems.
At the same meeting Robert O’Brien, assistant dean of the college of arts and sciences, announced the University would send him East next week to the University of Minnesota to study living accommodations there for transfer students.
Schmoe said he was “inclined to say, not ‘resettlement,’ but ‘concentration’ camps,” in referring to the barracks being prepared at Japanese reception centers.
“In Toppenish the government has taken over for assembly centers huts once used by Indians. They are surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by men armed with bayonets,” he declared.
He hastened to add, however, that he understood construction at Toppenish was not yet completed, and the camp would probably undergo further cleaning up.
“But to put families, people not even under suspicion, in such rooms behind a barbed wire fence, that is simply too much. We should do something about it,” he asserted.
He immediately remarked, though, that he doubted if “we can do much about it.”
Schmoe also declared camps for actually suspected aliens in Missoula, Mont., were in better condition than those in Toppenish.
Schmoe suggested several ways in which his audience might assist Japanese-American students, acts such as volunteering to care for their more valuable personal goods for the duration, establishing contacts for them in Eastern schools to which they might transfer, and helping their families prepare for journeys to evacuation camps.
He was introduced to his audience as a faculty member now on leave, but Dean Hugo Winkenwerder of forestry last night stated Schmoe was no longer connected in any way with the University.
Also on the program was Lily Yorozu, senior in sociology, who discussed the evacuation from the Nisei students’ point of view.
Mortar Board members, following the discussion, decided to take no group action to aid Japanese-American students, but to leave any aid purely to individual action.