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AI: And you and your family were all sent to Puyallup...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...to the, what was then called the "Camp Harmony Assembly Center."

BH: Yes.

AI: What -- can you tell me, what was your own, personal reaction when you got there to that center?

BH: Well, we were put in -- we were told to assemble in an empty lot near Chinatown and put on buses and sent out there. And there were several thousand people already out there. And we were driven through the barbed wire gates, and here was this vast area of chicken coops. Long wooden structures, with doors every ten feet or so leading to cubicles inside. And my first impression was, "Jesus Christ. What are we getting into?" I think the people who were already there had done a remarkable job of adjusting. The mess halls weren't working. The plumbing wasn't working. There was great confusion. But these people showed a stoicism that was remarkable. And my own feeling was, "What the hell are they trying to do to us?"

AI: And at that point, did you feel that you were an American still? How did you --

BH: Yes. I felt that I was an American that was being outraged. Now, I think we ought to say something here about Jimmie Sakamoto's role here. The army had come to Sakamoto and suggested setting up some kind of self-governing system in the camp. And the army, they didn't know any better, they said, "We ought to have..." I forget the various categories, but the people who would keep the camp cleaned up and the people who would take care of the commissary, the food, and people who would take care of the recreation, keep people busy, organize a setup like that. And Jimmie, in this -- in what was called the "defense" whatever, picked people in the community to head up these divisions, and in order to have some sort of self-government set up in the camps so people wouldn't be sitting around twiddling their thumbs and getting mad and things. Well, of course, Jimmie picked people he knew who were mostly JACL people. And there were others who were not involved in JACL who said, "That damn Jimmie is picking all his friends for these fat jobs." What fat jobs? [Laughs] Anyway, there was a good deal of ill feeling about that.

AI: Was this the Evacuation Administration Headquarters group?

BH: I don't know what it was called in the camps, but the evacuation headquarters was in the, the JACL office on Main Street.

AI: So it was a -- perhaps a number of the same people...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...were involved --

BH: Yeah.

AI: -- then, once you were at Puyallup.

BH: Right.

AI: I see. Well, even though you and some others were actively trying to assist in some ways to make this administration go more smoothly, at some point, you obtained the reputation as a "troublemaker" while you were at Puyallup.

BH: Yeah.

AI: Please talk a little bit about how you think you got this reputation and what, whether that was warranted.

BH: Well, I don't know why I was considered a troublemaker. The only -- the one guess I have is that I was too outspoken. When something went wrong, I would go to the white administrators of the camp and say, "This isn't going to work. Now, we got to do it some other way." Or I would go and say, "Hey, we've got problems here. Let's take care of them." And I thought I was trying to help in the administration of the camp. But I'd been there about three months, and the camp had been -- people in the camp had been told that they're going to Minidoka, Idaho. But I was called in, and said, "Hosokawa, you're not going to Idaho. We're going to send you somewhere else." And there were several others in the same category. And I said, "Why are you sending me?" And J.J. McGovern, who was an administrator at the camp, said, "I don't know. The army says you have to go." Well, I knew damn well he knew, but he didn't have the guts to tell me.

So I was sent to Heart Mountain. Tom Masuda, I think, was sent to Poston. He was an attorney. Kenji Ito, another attorney, was sent somewhere in Arizona. And there's another fellow who I didn't know, he was known as a professional gambler, worked at the Tokyo Club, and he was sent to another camp. But the four of us were kicked out at the same time. And I was given about three hours to pack some stuff, and escorted to the railroad station, and the escort took me to Heart Mountain.

AI: Now, many years later, you obtained some government documents about -- that shed light on that incident.

BH: Yeah, some light.

AI: And I'd like to come back to that later on in our interview.

BH: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.