Storycorps trailer rolls into Sacramento

StoryCorps had just opened for business when it yielded its first surprise.

Alice Kimiko Sakata Hayashi, 95, made an unexpected confession as she was about to be interviewed by her granddaughter for the nationwide oral history project.

Being held for four years in World War II internment camps - where thousands of Japanese Americans were sent by presidential order after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor - with her husband, a Sacramento dentist, and their three small children was "the best thing," she said.

"I was a spoiled housewife. I had a baby sitter and a laundry service. I didn't know how to cook."

She learned to make waffles, apple pie and full meals while in the camp. And her husband, Akio, who became the trusted camp dentist, often went bird hunting to help feed his family.

"I don't know how he got a gun. He loved hunting, so he would go shoot ducks and geese, and bring them home, and I had to do all the feathering. I hated it, feathers all over the place," she said, laughing. "Being evacuated for the war was the best thing for me. I learned so many things."

Hayashi, who grew up at Fourth and O streets, was one of the first Sacramentans to have her story recorded for posterity as a part of StoryCorps.

Her granddaughter Leslie Miyamoto Huffman conducted the 40-minute interview in StoryCorps' rolling recording studio one day last week. The shiny, soundproofed Airstream travel trailer with "StoryCorps" painted in orange on its sides is parked on Ninth Street outside the Central Library through May 10, there to capture the "everyday history" of 125 ordinary citizens.

"Everyone has an interesting story to tell, and everyone deserves to have those stories told. When woven together, they create the fabric of a community," said Rick Eytcheson, president and CEO of Sacramento's Capital Public Radio, one of the project's sponsors. "We think this is a tremendous opportunity for the community."

This is StoryCorps' first time in Sacramento.

The project was created in 2003 by Dave Isay, who had made a radio documentary called "Ghetto Life 101," which was the 10-day audio diary of two 13-year-old Chicago boys. Isay wanted to expand on the idea with one person being interviewed by another - relative, friend, co-worker - in quiet privacy.

The first StoryCorps recording booth opened in New York City's Grand Central Station in 2003. Two years later, two mobile booths set off across America, visiting San Francisco in November 2005, and Santa Monica and San Diego the following spring. This is StoryCorps' fourth stop in California.

"This started out as this crazy idea, and it has just caught on like wildfire," Isay said from his office in New York City. "Story- Corps is a very simple idea: Two people in a booth with (a staff person) to help out.

"Our mission is to honor and celebrate each other's lives through listening. It's a simple idea that seems to work in so many ways and be so important to people's lives. It's a privilege for all of us to deliver this service around the country."

Rachel Falcone has worked with StoryCorps for just over a year and is part of the Sacramento team.

"You can't listen to these stories and not be changed," Falcone said.

StoryCorps' mobile booths have set up shop in almost every state, collecting more than 18,000 stories. With the participants' permission, a CD of each recording is archived in the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C.

In Sacramento, interviews also will be archived at the Central Library's Sacramento Room, where the general public can listen to them. Each participant is given a CD to take home, as well.

"My children, who are 5 and 3, will be able to hear her story, and that's wonderful,"

Huffman said of her grandmother. "I think that for historians," said Isay, "these (recordings) will be valuable, because they will give them an idea of what day-to-day life was like in the 20th and 21st centuries, through these voices and stories and hearts.

"History is often told from the voices and perspectives of statesmen, but to have a bottom-up history of who we are and what we believe in, and where we come from and what we hope for our children, is of enormous value."

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