gotohealth's Blog

 Floyd Wilfred Schmoe (September 21, 1895 – April 20, 2001) was a Quaker, pacifist, author, college professor, marine biologist, and park ranger living in the Seattle, Washington, area for most of his life. He earned Japan's highest civilian honor for his peace activism and was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize three times.

 

As part of my job of collecting documentation for the U of WA Suzzallo Library Special Collections, I had contacted Floyd Schmoe and Reverend Emery Andrews because of their major roles in helping with the Japanese community experience in the Pacific Northwest.

 

I was excited to be invited to lunch with Andrews by  Schmoe and his second wife Tomiko in their Juanita, WA, home. Floyd and Tomiko had met during his work with “Houses for Hiroshima”. His wife, Ruth Schmoe, died on March 15, 1969.

 

It was a usual busy 1970 morning with getting a baby sitter for my three-yr-old, who to be there when our kindergartener came back from school to Sam and my Seattle Capitol Hill home on 23rd Avenue East. 

 

Driving our white 1967 Chevy Malibu the 10 minutes to the Japanese Baptist Church on Seattle’s First Hill, where he was still the active pastor, I picked up Reverend Andrews. Then we headed down Boren and Rainier Avenues to I-90 and the Morrow Floating Bridge. Halfway across the bridge, I ran out of gas! By good fortune, there was a police car right behind me! In those days they carried a gallon container with gas in the trunk of their black squad car. He gave me some gas and I was able to fill up at the Mizuta owned station on Mercer Island. We were not late for our Gyoza & Tempura Bento lunch.

 

Most of the lunch conversation centered around Schmoe’s son-in-law, Gordon Hirabayashi and Gordon’s wife Esther, who was Schmoe’s daughter. That’s when I learned about Gordon’s activities and how Gordon hitch-hiked to his prison detentions for breaking the law with his defiant protest of EO9066 curfew. I was able to share with Schmoe that my mother told me, Gordon was her 5th grade classmate at the Thomas School in Auburn, WA, in 1928.

 

Reverend Andrews is remembered for his “Blue Box” that made several trips from Seattle to Idaho’s Minidoka with needed items from the storage items in the church gymnasium. He also moved his family to Twin Falls to serve his parishioners. According to Emery’s son Brooks, “We would always travel in what was called the “Blue Box.” The Blue Box was an old, I think it was a Ford truck body with a, with a, just a box on the back of it, and it looked like a bus. A very square–shaped bus. And it was blue and it was affectionately known as the Blue Box, because everywhere you went, you rode, rode in the Blue Box.” Someone must have a picture?

 

Schmoe and Andrews contributed far more than simple Compassion and Kindness to the Japanese people in America. They dedicated their lives to our community. The last time I visited Floyd Schmoe was in 2000 when he was105-years-old, and still sharp, at the Ida Culver House on 65th Avenue in north Seattle. He passed the following year.