Читать книгу The Gang of Four - Bob Santos - Страница 22

CHAPTER 5: Tents, Chandeliers and “Siwash”

Bernie was becoming curious about the world around him. On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. With no playmates of his own age, Bernie spent much time in the company of his father and his father’s friends. As the adults talked about the impending war with Japan, Bernie listened intently. He had never seen a Japanese person. He curiously asked his father who the Japanese were and why they bombed Pearl Harbor.

In 1943, Julian decided to give young Bernie a taste of the big city. The Reyes family took a trip to Spokane. It was a wondrous new world for Bernie. He saw his first street light. He saw the biggest building he had ever seen in his young life, the Montana Hotel, in the poor section of Spokane.

He was introduced to his first indoor toilet and was so fascinated that he flushed it again and again. He saw his first movie, a cartoon with Bugs Bunny and Elmer Fudd, and enjoyed his first taste of popcorn. He saw another movie, a Western, where Bernie and Lawney were the only ones in the theater rooting for the Indians.

Later that day, on a visit to the Natorium Park, the biggest amusement park in the Inland Empire, a white man threw Lawney out because he looked like a “Jap.”

Julian told the man, “He’s not a Jap, he’s an Indian.” The man said, “Well, I guess that’s better than being a Jap.”

On the trip home to Inchelium, Bernie and Lawney talked among themselves.

Why, Bernie asked Lawney, did the man think you were Japanese? Lawney, as bewildered as Bernie, didn’t know. All they knew was that America was at war with the Japan and that the Japanese lived very far away, across the Pacific Ocean.

In the fall of 1943, Bernie started school in Inchelium. With his natural curiosity, he was an avid learner. His sister Luana had prepared him for school, reading daily to him.

Bernie found that he liked school and he easily made friends. And finally, he had friends of his own age.

In 1944, the Reyes family was again on the move. Julian had found work as a Spanish interpreter for an apple grower in the Okanogan Valley who had hired two hundred non-English speaking Mexican pickers. The family lived in two cabins, one cabin for sleeping and one cabin for cooking, eating, and studying, with electricity but no running water. There was a large communal building for showering and laundering with toilets and sinks.

The Mexican laborers lived in two large warehouses converted to housing.

One night, with about a week left in the apple harvest season, a fire broke out and consumed one of the warehouses. The Mexican laborers, who had been sleeping, barely got out, many with only the shirts on their backs. They lost everything, including all of the wages they had earned at the orchard.

When Julian, Lawney, and Bernie came upon the scene in the morning, most of the laborers were huddled under blankets, clad only in undershirts, in tears.

The sight of these hardworking men in despair had a profound effect on Bernie. He wanted to do something to ease their pain. He searched the charred remains to look for salvageable items but could not find any. It was a memory and a feeling he wouldn’t forget--when you see others in pain, do something to ease that pain.

The Reyes family worked hard and saved enough money to buy a house and in 1948, they put a down payment on a house,

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Bernie, upper Hall Creek, Inchelium WA

Photo courtesy UIATF