Beth Markley and Jim Barclay

[00:00] BETH MARKLEY: We are recording. Go ahead. Hi, my name is Beth Markley. I'm 51 years old. Today is Monday, May 11, 2020. We're recording from Boise, Idaho. And I am pleased to be able to chat with my uncle Jim Barclay. Hi, Jim. Uncle Jim.

[00:21] JIM BARCLAY: Hello.

[00:23] BETH MARKLEY: Hello. And how old are you now, Uncle Jim?

[00:28] JIM BARCLAY: I wasn't aware that we had to confess these things. I'm 80.

[00:33] BETH MARKLEY: You're 80 years old, and you are retired. One of my dads. Retired police officer.

[00:42] JIM BARCLAY: Yes.

[00:43] BETH MARKLEY: And you are my dad's closest in age to my dad, who passed away 13 years ago. Yeah. How much older than dad are you? Eight years, seven years.

[01:03] JIM BARCLAY: Nine years, I believe. Nine or ten years.

[01:06] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember growing up, the stories that he told about your dad. My granddad. I have one memory, actually, of granddad. He died when I was still, I think, six or seven. But I remember sneaking out of bed. I'd been put down for a nap by grandmother, who we called honey, and snuck down into his room. And he was sick at the time. He had emphysema. He was connected to a bunch of machines in the bed that had been set up, I think, in late, like a dining area or living area or something. And I wanted him to be very quiet so I could talk to him instead of napping. And he said, well, hello there. You know, his voice was very loud and very deep, and I was totally busted. And honey came rushing into the room. What are you doing out of bed? So that was really, like, the most concrete memory I have of your dad. But my dad used to talk a lot about one period of time that really didn't have a lot of relevance to me in terms of, like, my knowledge. But what. What was going on with your family during World War Two? And then recently, it's kind of just in my adult life has come to just be more relevant to me. And that was the time that you all were at the. Or that he was part of the staff at the hunt camp, the japanese internment camp at Minidoka.

[02:56] JIM BARCLAY: Right.

[02:57] BETH MARKLEY: And you remember a little bit about that, right. I mean, how old were you at the time when he was stationed there?

[03:04] JIM BARCLAY: I was very young, actually. It started in 1942. I would have been just over three years old at the time. Went on up to 1945. I do have some very vague memories about Camp Minidoka, Camp Hunt, as it was more formally or more casually known as at the time, because it was located near Hunt, Idaho. The main memory that I have was going out to Camp Hunt with my father, who was at the time the chief of internal security at Camp Minidoka. I remember it being a long, dusty road with lots of sagebrush and flatdead. And I have vague memories of being near the police station and playing with some of the kids that were out there and wondering why they were there. Maybe just a little bit of background on that. Prior to his taking the position at Camp Minidoka, my father had been with the Twin Falls Police department for many years and actually served as acting chief of police police or assistant chief of police for some time. And there seems some debate in the family as to why he ended up at Minidoka but the consensus seems to be. I talked with your father about it a long time ago and more recently with my sister Sally. It was a job that he was kind of recruited for because of World War Two. And my mother, I understand, encouraged him to take it. There is inherent violence in police work, and I think she felt more comfortable with him being out there than being on patrol in City of Twin Falls at the time. That's my major memory of Camp Minidoka at the time. Just a dry, dusty place with some kids out there. I didn't really know why they were there. Nobody at the time tried to explain it to me.

[05:43] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah, well, I think it's. Let's talk a little bit about that, that history before then, because I think that was a lightbulb for me when I had the opportunity to go to Twin. Was it Twin Falls? He had that. There was a ceremony. He was given an award for an incident that happened in Twin Falls, which is still, I think, to this day, the only fatal shooting police involved shooting or in the history of Twin Falls county, wasn't it?

[06:18] JIM BARCLAY: Well, yes. At least the city of Twin Falls.

[06:21] BETH MARKLEY: The city of Twin Falls So he was out on patrol with.

[06:27] JIM BARCLAY: Another officer? Yes, with another officer. It was in May of 1939, a few months before I was born, and an armed robbery occurred at a service station. And since radios and things were not even thought of actually at the time, having two way radios in their cars or anything, the victim of the armed robbery drove to the police station and told them. And my dad and his partner happened to come by or were notified somehow by the headquarters. Anyway, they came back. The victim of the armed robbery got into the back of the police car, and they went out looking for the bad guys and saw them leaving town on another vehicle. And according to the citation, they stopped the vehicle. My father was driving the police unit. His partner got out of the car and approached the suspects, and one of them opened fire, killing him. And my father returned fire on, wounding one of the suspects and another one I managed to escape. That was something. One of the many things that he didn't talk a whole lot about. I tried to ask him questions about it. And especially when I became involved with law enforcement myself. The only piece of advice that he ever gave me was that if you ever get in a shooting and you shoot somebody, be prepared for some awfully stupid questions from the media. That was the end of it. Fortunately, I never had to follow that advice. But somewhere along the line, he was offered this position at Camp Minidoka at a time.

[08:36] BETH MARKLEY: At a time, really, when. When he had just been involved in this. In this situation where his partner died. He had two young boys at home and. And my grandmother, who was all of four foot eleven, but pretty ferocious because I just remember coming at her, coming in when I was taking that. Supposed to be taking that nap. And, you know, she was right. It's shed light. Go ahead. Sorry.

[09:05] JIM BARCLAY: Have to be feisty because she had to look and take care of everything. So. Yes.

[09:15] BETH MARKLEY: So that might have some light on the motivation for taking this job in the middle of the depression.

[09:21] JIM BARCLAY: Right. She was not happy. She was pregnant with me when the shooting occurred. And so when this came up a couple of years later, I'm sure she was part of the motivation for my father to take the position.

[09:40] BETH MARKLEY: But then he. So he wasn't one for talking much about his experience there. But, I mean, did he say anything about having served there?

[09:54] JIM BARCLAY: Yes. There were some times when he would let out little bits of information. My sister Sally remembers him talking about how nice the people were the internees. And my father mentioned to her and also to me at one time, how little work he had to do because they actually took care of their own. Any problems that came up themselves. They were older japanese citizens, and they had. They were from. Many of them were from Japan. And they had their own formal, informal societal rules and regulations that they went by. As a result, there was very little problem for security forces or police action at Camp Minidoka.

[10:58] BETH MARKLEY: Well, in fact, I remember. So this summer, the. They had an opening of the Minidoka Historical Society or historical site. So I know you haven't had a chance to visit that yet, but I haven't. I took the family, our kids out there this summer. And it is out in the middle of nowhere. I mean, there's. There's grass fields. And that was by design, really. These locations, from what I know about the history of these internment sites, were there. Were there was land selected that was far away from urban centers, I mean, by design. So that, I guess maybe to cut down on public outrage that people were being interned, imprisoned. I found that really interesting.

[11:48] JIM BARCLAY: Yeah. Also, another consideration at the time was that it would tend to prevent escapes because there was no place to escape to.

[11:57] BETH MARKLEY: Right. Right.

[11:58] JIM BARCLAY: That turned out to not be any kind of a problem, at least with Minidoka.

[12:03] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah. Well, in fact, there's a story about a fence. So when the internees first came to Minidoka, from what I've learned, there was. I mean, they had to build a lot of that camp. I mean, there was very little there, and it was in the middle of July or August. It was really hot and dry, dusty. They built all the irrigation canals. They built all of the. There were barracks there. They built all of the outbuildings. And a lot of the camp, from what I understood, was really well established, with thousands of people there when the fence was built, when the contractors came in to build a fence. And I understand there was quite a bit of outrage on the part of the internees about this fence being built when no one had tried to leave.

[12:55] JIM BARCLAY: Right.

[12:56] BETH MARKLEY: And for a while, I understand that it was electrified.

[13:01] JIM BARCLAY: I'm not sure about that. I do know that many of the, if not most of the internees were very loyal american citizens. They were doing their best to cooperate with the government. I understand that. And I talked to, on occasion in my career in law enforcement in California, had a chance to talk to some of the people that had been interned in the other camps, and the general consensus was they were going to cooperate. They understood to a certain extent the fear that a japanese invasion along the west coast, they tried to accept that as a justifiable reason for the internment, and they tried to cooperate with the american government. So when they show up at this prison and they have no fence around it, you know, they were. They had kind of a reason to be a little outraged that now that they were there in prison, they were going to build a fence around it. It was rather strange.

[14:19] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah, I. And I. I think there's this whole notion of duty and honor that I find really fascinating to think about in terms of the older generation. They call them the survivors, the folks who lived at the camp, the Issei, the first generation Japanese Americans, and how they have this tradition in their culture of not really speaking about their experience there. And then it's their children, the Nisei, who have found it a part of their duty to share these stories, to ask their parents questions. And I just. It strikes me as interesting that it's kind of parallel to the situation with our family, where granddad didn't want to talk about or didn't talk about his experience there.

[15:18] JIM BARCLAY: I recall one time asking my father about his experience there. The internees had, at the. Towards the end, when war was winding down and they were going to close the camp, they produced the. It's kind of. It's similar to a high school yearbook of memories called the Minidoka interlude. And I had noticed in my dad's copy of that, at the front were photographs of all the administrators at the camp. And I asked him why his photograph was not in there. And he told me he wouldn't allow it because he was ashamed of the whole development there and the reasons for all of these people being american citizens being rounded up and put in this internment center. And that was about all he would say about it. He.

[16:24] BETH MARKLEY: There was something about a quote for that book. Do you remember what he told me?

[16:30] JIM BARCLAY: They had a picture of him with some of the other staff way in the back of the book, and under it was a quote that was supposedly from him that just said, very satisfactory. And I cannot for the life of me picture my father ever saying something like that. It's just not his words. He had made many, many friendships with the internees. There were no problems that he ever talked about. As I say, he mentioned to my sister how few problems there were and that they tended to police themselves.

[17:20] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah. One of the things that I thought was interesting when I had the opportunity to tour was there was, there's a baseball field there that they've rebuilt, and baseball was huge. They had, I think, eleven baseball fields, and they had a couple of leagues, and they would get together and have tournaments between the internees and the surrounding townspeople and members of the security staff. I know granddad was into baseball. Do you think he ever played baseball at the camp?

[17:54] JIM BARCLAY: I don't know if he played at the camp or not. He did play. He told me a semi pro team in the area played second base. And I am assuming that he probably did play there because I can't picture him seeing a baseball game and not being involved in some way with it. If he had the opportunity, he would have been involved, but he never mentioned that.

[18:23] BETH MARKLEY: Interesting. My dad had one or two stories that he shared with. With us. He. He talked about honey taking lists, Christmas lists, and doing some Christmas shopping in town for some of the internees families. Did you share stories at all with your sons while they were growing up about your dad's experience or what you knew about. I mean, how did you talk to them about this?

[18:51] JIM BARCLAY: Well, that was. There was a little difficulty there, and my sons weren't with me a whole lot of that time. They were. They were told about it. We went through the. My copy of the Minidoka interlude. I'm not sure that it made a great impression on them at the time, but they did grow up, come into adulthood knowing about this whole incident and the black eye that it kind of gave the United States of America as far as its history. I'm glad that they did know that, because I have run into, in just very recent weeks, some people, adults my age and younger, that had no clue that camps like Minidoka ever existed, really. In fact, I had one person tell me that that had to be something made up by the far left to try and discredit America. And when I explained that I had seen the place, my father worked there and that it did exist, and I could show them pictures, or that person pictures stomped off and haven't seen him since. But it's amazing to me that we have adults that have grown up in the United States that don't know that this internment existed. Nothing about that executive order that was issued by the president allowing it. And.

[20:37] BETH MARKLEY: And it's a deep tragedy just on the face of it, but also knowing that so many of these japanese families, I mean, they. Their sons served in the second world war, and there's an entire contingency of survivors of the camps who lost their sons as soldiers. There's a wall dedicated to those. I mean, I just can't imagine having that situation where all of your livelihood and property is taken away from you and then your sons are taken to serve in a war for the country that did that.

[21:19] JIM BARCLAY: Actually, they volunteered for the military. There was a hesitancy. They were still under suspicion. They were japanese. We were fighting the Japanese, and they had to volunteer and take oath of allegiance to the United States in addition to the pledge of allegiance. And it turns out that at least one battalion of japanese american citizens was one of the most highly decorated infantry battalion in World War Two for their work in the Pacific.

[22:00] BETH MARKLEY: In fact, you should go to the interpretive center at Minidoka because there's an entire display dedicated to that battalion and incredible heroism. And so it makes it especially shocking now to have to defend that or to explain to someone that that is not a conspiracy. It must be interesting for you as a, you know, I know that you and I politically differ in terms of, you know, where we stand, but for to have to defend something as it's not a far left conspiracy theory to discredit the United States that it actually happened. Does it give you a sense of purpose at all in terms of, like, sharing this story or feeling that there's a responsibility?

[22:52] JIM BARCLAY: Yeah, I did not know that there was this lack of knowledge out there. It could be coincidence that I've run into these people all at once. Things like that tend to happen when we get. Had this scheduled, and then everything kind of came together at once. But yes, I think it is a story that needs to be told. People say that, you know, this could never happen in the United States. Well, it did. And the primary reason that american citizens were arrested and placed in this confinement was the fact that they were different than the rest of the. Than us.

[23:42] BETH MARKLEY: Did you and did you and Aunt Sally and your brothers ever talk about this growing up? Ever speculate on any of this? Was it something that you just accepted as family history?

[23:56] JIM BARCLAY: We accepted it. We knew it existed. We knew that it was wrong. We knew the history behind it. And we never went into any deep discussions about it. No, it just. It was.

[24:10] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah.

[24:10] JIM BARCLAY: And that was it. My dad didn't talk much about it. He didn't talk about a lot of his work in law enforcement ever. It was just his nature. He was quiet about it.

[24:22] BETH MARKLEY: What about you said that it's this family history has had some influence on you in your career in law enforcement and otherwise? What kind of influence did it have?

[24:33] JIM BARCLAY: One. One thing that I did pick up from my dad, and it's the earliest I can remember learning this. I've seen several examples since. But something he did tell me just came to mind, is that just because something is legal or authorized does not make it right. I do recall him saying that, probably in the same conversation where he told me the very little that he had already said about his work there later on. I know it influenced some of my activities and on the Sacramento police department when I was involved with the crime prevention unit. And there had been a series of crimes against elderly japanese people in Sacramento. And it probably is what caused me to reach out to a local japanese american language newspaper, the Hoka Bay, Maine, I believe it was, and offer some crime prevention tips. And that led to my working with some of the senior citizen asian groups, not just japanese, but also chinese and some other, some others through interpreters, working with the senior citizens and crime prevention. I'm sure it had that influence. That was a major influence.

[26:19] BETH MARKLEY: Interesting. I never knew that. That's really all I have for questions? How many? I mean, do you have any other perspective that this is kind of jogged loose in your memory?

[26:32] JIM BARCLAY: No, there were a whole. There are a whole lot of things you can go into that I've never, you know, had a chance to discuss with. It would be interesting. We sat down sometime and tried to go into it, but the whole thing about race relations, for example, in Idaho. Idaho has a pretty bad image thanks to a small group of people in northern Idaho and some other spread throughout the state. But the whole idea of race relations in Idaho is something that be worth exploring more in depth, I think sometimes, especially when it comes to law enforcement.

[27:28] BETH MARKLEY: Do you find it? Do you find it, I mean, do you have any perspective on the. The state of affairs in terms of not only race relations, but just civil discourse and being able to call someone on, like, the erroneous notion that this didn't ever happen without getting combative. Do you think things have declined in our country? Is there any recourse for that kind of situation?

[27:56] JIM BARCLAY: I don't know that they've had declined any. I think the radical people on the left and the right are making more noise than they used to, or that the medium perhaps is paying more attention to some of the noise that they're making. I find it interesting when I see it. I have a notification, for example, about a post on Facebook from one of my friends, and I read it and then I look at some of the comments that were made by other people. As far as the current political situation, this coronavirus pandemic, these comments that are made by people, and I think the Internet has given voice to some people, to some very ill informed people that are not only ill informed, but have no desire to become informed are making a lot of noise. But as far as the majority of the people that I associate with that I've met since I returned to Idaho in 98, 99, whenever it was, I think that this is one of the greatest places in the country to live as far as the people and their relations with their neighbors, with people of color. I know there are a lot out there that would disagree with that, but that's my own personal observations.

[29:58] BETH MARKLEY: Do we have an obligation, I think, as to. As people who don't represent those far right or left groups and may be uncomfortable with speaking up, you know, to tell our story?

[30:17] JIM BARCLAY: Yes, we do. The problem could be the finding people that are willing to listen to the story with an open mind, the people that need to hear the story. On the other hand, the people that I have mentioned earlier that had no idea. Only one person really reacted negatively, and that was more out of shock that something like this happened.

[30:47] BETH MARKLEY: I think that's interesting. Well, you know, this was not a subject that was covered necessarily, when I was in school. I mean, there was. There may have been a mention of it, but there was no. There was no outrage, I guess, you know, there was no. Can you believe that we did this? And I think there have been times when I have been really reluctant to say what, anything about what my family heritage was out of a sense of. I, you know, it was a shameful situation. It was like it was a stain on the whole country. Do you think. What do you think granddad would think about us having this conversation and talking about what happened and our perspective on it?

[31:36] JIM BARCLAY: He would approve of it. He wouldn't be involved with it, but he would definitely be approved of it. He would probably, knowing that we can sit here and talk about this openly now, I'll take that back. He probably would be involved with it. He would probably be more forthcoming with information about his own observations. I do remember one incident, not related to Minidoka or anything, where I asked him, well, a brief background. At the time, he was an investigator for the state department of law enforcement. And when he could do it, he would take me along on one of his trips to other parts of the state where he was doing a background investigation, for example, on a prospective employee, or there was no danger or anything. And things like that were okay back then. I remember asking him why there were no black Idaho state police officers. And he said that they were, they had thought about recruiting black officers specifically, but they wouldn't because Idaho state police officers were alone and they were afraid of what would happen if a solo black officer stopped some redding, quoting him, quoting my dad, some redneck dipo or independent loggerhead on some back road in northern Idaho. And something happened. This was long before they had instant communications or anything like that where an officer could call for help. So that was his position at the time that they would like to have hired, but they were afraid to.

[33:38] BETH MARKLEY: Interesting.

[33:40] JIM BARCLAY: And now things are somewhat different.

[33:46] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah, well, that's fascinating. I had never thought of that from that perspective or that he would care.

[33:54] JIM BARCLAY: Yeah, well, that again, we're talking back 1950s attitude. So actually he was quite progressive. Just since we're talking, and we have a couple of minutes left. There was one time on one of those trips where we were going down the highway and the state police unit was coming towards us. And my dad waved to the guy. He was an unmarked unit we were in, and the state trooper waved back, and my dad told me it's a good thing he waved back, because if he hadn't, he would have been hearing from me tonight when I got chance to get on the phone. So his idea was that they're supposed to interact with people. His idea of community policing before community policing ever existed or was ever thought of. So.

[34:52] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah. Yeah. Well, I. And I wonder about, you know, just this notion of interacting with. With the community members and getting people comfortable. There wasn't. With policing. There wasn't the same, you know, there wasn't the same emphasis on race relations and police relations and relationships with law enforcement and so forth at one time.

[35:23] JIM BARCLAY: As there is now much smaller population in this state. At the time, everybody knew everybody, and the police officers came from the communities they served and knew everybody, and everybody knew them. So it was a little bit different situation than we have now.

[35:42] BETH MARKLEY: After he retired, were you still living at home or were you. Were you out of the house by then?

[35:47] JIM BARCLAY: I was with police department in Sacramento at the time. I was here for his retirement, which consisted of getting his picture taken with the then superintendent of state police, getting a plaque. He was quite sick at the time.

[36:04] BETH MARKLEY: Right.

[36:05] JIM BARCLAY: My phone waited until we're almost done to.

[36:11] BETH MARKLEY: Dang it.

[36:12] JIM BARCLAY: But just. Well, I know nobody in. Nobody in Clark fork, Idaho.

[36:26] BETH MARKLEY: So, like, my computer dinged a couple of times while we were talking. Well, he must have known. Did. I mean, was your sense of your parents as you were growing up that he just knew everybody in the. In the community?

[36:40] JIM BARCLAY: Yes, that's kind of why he suggested when I told him I was going into law enforcement or wanted to, that I leave the state to do it, because he knew everybody and he didn't want to be looking over my shoulder the whole time. And I wasn't particularly fond of the idea either.

[37:02] BETH MARKLEY: Did your mom have any anxiety about you going into law enforcement?

[37:07] JIM BARCLAY: Probably, but she never said so. No, no. She is quite quiet.

[37:15] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah.

[37:18] JIM BARCLAY: Also, my dad suggested California because they had actual training for police officers there. And at the time, they didn't hear in Idaho.

[37:25] BETH MARKLEY: Oh, I didn't know that.

[37:27] JIM BARCLAY: The only training, formal training, was from the Coeur d'alene police department, I understand. He told me all their new officers, which would have been very few, but new officers went to the FBI academy. There was no academy in Idaho.

[37:43] BETH MARKLEY: Huh.

[37:45] JIM BARCLAY: At the time that I got into it, 1960s 65.

[37:50] BETH MARKLEY: Now, I know my dad never got into law enforcement. Did Uncle Ken do anything like, of a sort? No, no. Just you.

[37:58] JIM BARCLAY: Just me. Interesting I'm the only one that. For whatever reason.

[38:04] BETH MARKLEY: Is he the reason you did?

[38:07] JIM BARCLAY: Probably, yeah. I couldn't think of anything else I really wanted to do. I tried a couple of things, but in college as investigating majors and didn't work out, it turns out that I had to study things that I wasn't the least bit interested in order to major.

[38:34] BETH MARKLEY: Well, interesting. Well, this has been fascinating. I appreciate you taking the time to fill me in on a little bit more family history. Yeah. And I think if you have that opportunity to go to the.

[38:48] JIM BARCLAY: Oh, I will be going down.

[38:50] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah.

[38:50] JIM BARCLAY: As soon as this pandemic thing is over.

[38:53] BETH MARKLEY: Yeah. They have. Every summer they have the pilgrimage, which you could join as a. We're technically descendants of the minidoka as well.

[39:05] JIM BARCLAY: Yes. I talked to a ranger that, you know.

[39:10] BETH MARKLEY: Oh, yeah.

[39:10] JIM BARCLAY: That runs. Yeah. So.

[39:13] BETH MARKLEY: And Mia. Oh, gosh, I can't remember the name. Her name. She runs the historical society. She's an eagle, so she's an easy. A good resource as well. But I took that bottle of sake that my dad had that was given to him by one of his colleagues in the army reserves as a descendant of one of the survivors, and donated it back to the museum. I don't know if they're going to be able to do anything with it. They probably don't need to put a bottle of sake from San Francisco on display in some sort of. But I was really amazed at how many gifts there were from survivors to people in the surrounding countryside, the. The farms that employed them and so forth.

[39:56] JIM BARCLAY: Yes.

[39:56] BETH MARKLEY: So, yes, I think we're back. Sorry, go ahead.

[40:01] JIM BARCLAY: Yeah, no, I think we. I do. I don't have a lot of the information, but I do know that the internees provided quite a bit of help to local farmers in that area. I don't have the whole story, but I. That be an interesting subject to look into.

[40:22] BETH MARKLEY: Courtney, how are we doing for time? Are we done? You all are right at the 40 minutes mark. Okay, cool. Well, that was super fun, Uncle Jim. Thank you so much.

[40:34] JIM BARCLAY: It was. Glad to do it.