May 8, 2008
I conducted a preliminary phone interview with Alfred Miyagishima yesterday afternoon. I heard he was hard-of-hearing so I called him from our sound-insulated studio so that I could talk loudly and not disrupt the office. Alfred was born and raised in Nebraska, where his father settled after working with a railroad company. I plan on asking him about the small Japanese communities that formed from former Japanese railroad workers. In 1940, Alfred and his family moved to Stockton where he got his first exposure to a larger Japanese community. How he felt about this move and the Japanese community will be another area for my questioning. He was sent to Gila River, left Gila River to finish high school in Nebraska, and then was drafted into the army. After the war he settled in Denver.