<Begin Segment 27>

DH: There was a racial incident that happened recently after building Bainbridge Gardens, and would you explain?

JH: Yeah. I believe it was in 1991 in which some hate mail was left on our windshield wipers at home, which was very worrisome for us because the cars are parked right in front of our house, and we thought it was aimed directly at us.

DH: What did the letters say?

JH: Basically it was... it had quite a bit to do with the African Americans, but basically it was very derogatory. Then for, I believe it was a second night after this happened my wife Chris got a phone call, which was very disturbing. And so what I did was I reported this to the multicultural group, and thank goodness that our school district had developed a multicultural board for racial understanding. And so we summoned this multicultural council, and we banded together and got the schools involved. And we decided that one of the best things to do was to have a march, and so marched down the streets of Madison and Winslow Way, an organized march. And what was wonderful was the participation of all the middle school students and high school students, and there was a tremendous amount of people. I can't tell you how many they were, but we all carried placards. And then we also organized a signature for everybody to sign a pledge to support against discrimination, and we put it in the newspaper. There was well over a thousand signatures, and we put that in the local paper. And because we did this, we also got the police department involved and the police department did some checking, and they finally isolated where it came from, and they were gone within a few days.

DH: So it was a small sort of --

JH: It was a small group. They usually are small groups. But what happened was just this year, earlier this year, it happened again, but it was in a different part of the island. And it was not as organized, but we again banded together and we made issuing statement in the local paper again, and we summoned something like 700 plus signatures for that also. So we're very pleased with the community support on issues such as that and when the need arises -- that's what's wonderful about our community. When the need arises, there is a lot of people there that are willing to help and support, and that gives me a great sense of comfort to live in the community like this.

DH: Well, except for the period during the war it seems like Japanese Americans, Japanese and Japanese Americans, have been very welcomed in this community.

JH: Yes, yes. Well, I think when you stop and think about it, war history is literally hell. I mean, I think if the war was against Chinese or Iranians or Albanians or whatever, the propaganda and the hysteria would be directed against those people that look like Iranians or Japanese or Chinese or whatever they happened to be. And it's an unfortunate thing, but it's gonna happen, and I think it did happen as far as with the Iranian war period. There was a blatant discrimination against Iranian Americans. So that problem will always exist, but what we need is community support and that's why I think that there is some strength in our Bainbridge Island community because there are a lot of people that are here to help you and to support you no matter who you are. And that's what makes this community so great.

DH: Explain the new garden at the Bainbridge Island Library. Is it the Bainbridge Library or Bainbridge Island Library?

JH: Yeah. The Bainbridge Public Library, the Japanese American community on Bainbridge Island made a decision to donate a Japanese garden in the new expanded library. And it was basically stemmed from the fact that we want to honor the Issei generation who, like my parents, made great sacrifices to bring us up as great citizens or good citizens. And they made great, great sacrifices to do this. So if you go to the library you will see a placard that says "In honor of the Issei generation." And it's a wonderful garden with haiku poetry, and we call it an interpretive garden. It's a rather unusual garden because there are placards with haiku poetry. And it has been extremely well received and one of the proud places to visit on Bainbridge Island. And the community at large, the community at large is extremely proud of that public library garden.

DH: You designed it.

JH: I helped design it.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.