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Title: Mitsuko Hashiguchi Interview
Narrator: Mitsuko Hashiguchi
Interviewer: James Arima
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Date: July 28, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-hmitsuko-01-0078

<Begin Segment 78>

JA: How do you see the Nikkei community now in Bellevue, the current status?

MH: Well, it's a little different. Now everybody does their own thing with their own family, with their own grandchildren, with their own something like that, and they just don't seem to do anything or come out anything. And so, with Alice working so hard on the project down there, I was hoping more of the Bellevue people would come out. There's lots of Bellevue people. What's the matter with them? Why don't they come out? And so, I can't understand it, I really can't. And so, well, sure everybody got things to do. I realize that, but, so I told Alice I would be happy to work as a leader and maybe get some telephone calls made that might stir them up like I do with sister city. I set that up into three calls, three girls making the calls that can yack, yack, yack. [Laughs]

JA: But again in the prewar days, you had this Nikkei community, community hall, but you had picnics that...

MH: Yeah, that's right.

JA: Three or four generations would come together.

MH: And they'd all come out.

JA: We don't seem to have those kind of events anymore.

MH: No, not anymore because there is nobody that's energetic enough to organize something or do anything like that. So only thing we're having now, annually, is our dinner together with the... all the Niseis that lives around here. So last year we had it at Country Buffet in Factoria. This year we're going to do it again at Country Buffet, and we'll see how many turns out, but every year we see how many we are losing in the...

JA: Well, you're having attrition of the Nisei...

MH: But they aren't...

JA: But more importantly, the Sansei and Yonsei...

MH: I know, but they aren't doing that. I'm not going to be the chairman of it. [Laughs]

<End Segment 78> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.