For Frances “Chickie” Ishihara White, 87, singing is all about spreading joy and happy memories to others.
White, who spent her teen years in a World War II Japanese internment camp, has been singing with a band since she was 13. When she was 15, she went with her family to live at the Minidoka War Relocation Center in Idaho, where she remained for 3 1/2 years.
At the camp she started singing every week with a swing band, and the group did its best to keep those held there as upbeat as possible.
“Entertainment, it really helped us a lot,” White said. “It could have been very depressing, but I think the music was a big help for our morale. We did a lot of dancing, too.”
As a teen, living with 10,000 other internees in a 960-acre camp with 44 blocks of tar paper barracks wasn’t horrible — there were dances in different sections almost every night, which she enjoyed on her nonperforming nights, she said.
“It was harder for the older people, I think,” White said. “For us kids, it was more fun because we were all together. But the older people, they lost their businesses and homes. It was unfortunate, but I think we all made the best of what there was.”
And she said she’s not really bitter about the experience.
“I think (the government) realized it was not the right thing to do, but the war was on, and this type of war had never come to our country,” White said. “I think they didn’t really know what to do.”
Putting up with the cramped facilities, the below-freezing winter nights with almost no heat and the scorching summer days with no cooling, it doesn’t seem like there would be much upside. But perhaps there was a little, she said.
“Looking at it in a different light, we were perhaps protected more than if we had stayed in the public,” White said. “We would have been looking over our shoulders all the time wondering if we were safe.”
After the war, White moved to Los Angeles and became an office worker, singing big-band jazz on weekends with Tets Bessho’s Band and later the Jim Araki Quartet in the 1940s and 1950s.
She married her husband, Ed White, in 1956 when she was 30 and retired to become a homemaker. The couple moved into the Courtyard Village Independent Senior Living Facility in Vancouver in 2011. They have one child, a son named Patrick.
At the facility, she picked up singing again and now practices at least once a week with pianist Dolli Bottemiller, who also lives there. The two like to perform whenever they get a chance, White said.
“Dolli and I just enjoy the music that she remembers and the music I remember,” White said. “We’re still fortunate to be able to do it halfway decently. It’s just a lot of fun.”
The pair will perform at a free event April 27 with the Minidoka Swing Band, a Portland-based group that honors the music and experience of those at the internment camps.
“I just like to sing what I think the people want to hear,” White said. “I’ll be singing songs from the 1930s and ’40s. It’s so nice, people come up after and thank us for bringing up so many wonderful memories. I hope that a lot of people will show up for this one. It’s the first time we’ve opened it up to the public.”
The show will be from 2-4 p.m. in the community room at the Courtyard Village Independent Senior Living in Vancouver, 4555 N.E. 66th Ave., and is open to the public.
Visit www.facebook.com/MinidokaSwingBand for information.
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