Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Bill Hosokawa Interview
Narrator: Bill Hosokawa
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Daryl Maeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: July 13, 2001
Densho ID: denshovh-hbill-01-0001

<Begin Segment 1>

AI: Today is July 13, 2001. We're here at the Densho studio in Seattle with Mr. Bill Hosokawa. I'm Alice Ito. My co-interviewer is Daryl Maeda. The videographer is Dana Hoshide.

Thank you very much, Mr. Hosokawa, for joining us today for this interview. We're very honored to have you here. And we'd like to start at the beginning and just ask when and where you were born.

BH: I was born in Seattle, January 30th, 1915.

AI: And what was your name given to you at birth?

BH: My Japanese name was Kunpei. Kunpei. First character is from kunsho. And pei is "peace" or "flat," hiratai.

AI: Can you tell us your parents' names and where they were from in Japan?

BH: Yes. My father's name was Setsugo Hosokawa. He came from a farming family in the outskirts of Hiroshima city. I think back then it was about a day's walk from his village to Hiroshima. Today it's about an hour's drive. And my mother, Kimiyo Omura, came from an adjoining village where her father was the soncho, or village chief.

AI: Now, we are going to be referring to some of your writings. You've written so extensively and also some previous interviews. So as we go along, we'll be making those references for the viewers' information. You did write some about your father and how he came to the U.S. in 1899...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...at the age of sixteen.

BH: Right.

AI: And it sounds like he had quite a varied experience working in a number of states in the West: Montana, California. That he learned English, and then later that your mother came to the U.S. in 1913. And I was wondering if you could just tell one or two memories, perhaps your most vivid memories from childhood of your mother, of your father.

BH: The 1913 date for my mother's arrival is, is a guess, I'm not sure. But my father did go back and marry Kimiyo Omura and brought her to the United States. My father had been in this country only a day or so when he was shipped off to Northern Montana to work on the railroad. And that was the reason he came to this country. The recruiter had come to the village where my father lived and apparently the recruiter was well-known in that area because he rounded up a number of farm boys and brought them to the United States to work on the railroad. My father liked to tell about how he and a friend were arguing during working -- their working day about whether the white stuff on the mountain over there was salt or snow. And the foreman became very angry and upbraided them. And my father, being a spunky young fellow, said, "The hell with it," and he set out for California from Northern Montana. He had no knowledge about the geography of the United States. He had no money to travel. So he walked the, along the railroads and rode the freight cars and wound up in Sacramento.

AI: So it sounds like your father was quite a storyteller.

BH: Yes. He loved to talk, and he was very articulate. And I'm sure that some of his stories were embellished a little bit. But yes, he was very interesting, a very interesting person.

AI: Now, tell us a little of your mother. I understand that she was more educated than the average Issei woman of her generation.

BH: My mother's father, my grandfather, was the soncho, the chief of the village area there. And apparently a man of considerable status in rural Japan. And my mother was the youngest of three children. I'm not sure exactly how much education she had, but she worked for a while as the, a primary school teacher. She also had some training in flower arrangement and other Japanese arts, which she abandoned for a long time but picked up again after my brother and I grew up, and she had a little more time.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.