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AI: Well, now, to come to where you enter the picture, you were born in 1915, and I recall reading one of your pieces, describing briefly that your parents did not want to speak English to you as a young child, for fear that you would grow up with an accent.

BH: Yes.

AI: And so when you did start public school, that you really didn't understand English. Could you tell a little bit about that experience?

BH: [Laughs] Yes. We spoke only Japanese at home. My mother spoke very little English, and my father's English was quite limited. And so I suppose my first exposure to English was when I went to kindergarten at the old Main Street School, on Main and Sixth Avenue. And I was there only very briefly, when we moved out a little further and I went to the Washington grade school. And I knew very little English, and I just sort of had to learn by osmosis.

AI: That must have been difficult.

BH: Oh, it probably was, but I suppose it just was a natural phenomenon.

AI: Well, now, at this time, it was obvious to you that you were different because you didn't speak English and you didn't understand what some of the other white American kids were saying. But aside from the language difference, when -- do you recall when you became aware of the difference as far as racially, that you were Asian -- or Japanese American rather than a white American?

BH: Yeah. Well, the student body of Washington grade school was made up mostly of the children of immigrants. There were Spanish Jews and German Jews and Russians and even some Northern European kids. And I don't recall that there was any conflict between them and me, but we did get along, and as we became more fluent in English. We could play together, associate together. And it didn't, not take me a great, long period to become fairly aware of what was going on in the school.

AI: So would you say about second grade or third grade, you had an awareness of, of some of these ethnic differences?

BH: I would, I would say that very early on, the first grade, I could tell that I was different from the other kids. But that didn't seem to make a great deal of difference. And after class, why, I would go home. But by the third grade, I was mixing more with my classmates and visiting their homes, and I don't recall if they ever visited my home, but I became very good friends with a Jewish kid named Harry Glickman. And his folks ran a grocery store on the corner of the block where I lived. And he taught me a great deal about what America was all, all about. For example, I had no idea what peanut butter was, and it was a repulsive-looking thing. But he gave me a piece of bread with peanut butter on it, and I tasted it, and by golly, it was pretty good. So it was that sort of association that helped in the integration of Bill Hosokawa into the American way of life.

AI: Well, now, during your grade school years, was this when your father was in the real estate business?

BH: No. During that period, my father was a -- ran an employment agency. He had a little office down on Main Street, between (Fourth and Fifth), and it consisted of a little room, a telephone, and his desk, and an area where Issei men, mostly bachelors, would come and wait for jobs to show up. And my father knew enough English to answer the phone, and some well-to-do Caucasian woman would say, "I need a boy to wash windows," or, "I need a boy to, to take the rug out and beat it." And he would find someone who was willing to do that kind of work, and send them out. And he took a small commission on their pay, and that's how he made a living.

AI: So your father actually had quite a bit of interaction with the white employers, or perhaps more communication with them than an average Issei might have.

BH: Yes. Occupation-wise, yes. Socially, no.

AI: And what, what kind of opinions or thoughts did he convey to you, if any, about interacting with white Americans? Did he talk much about problems of prejudice or discrimination or just instructions on how to behave or interact?

BH: I can't remember that we had any conversation like that. He was busy, I was busy with my things, and I did not feel discriminated against. And he wanted me to be a good student and he encouraged me to study, learn English, but I don't ever recall him talking to me about any discrimination that I might feel. Now, I know that he was aware of those things. I could hear him talking with his Issei friends about the Ku Klux Klan and some of the hostility that Japanese immigrants were facing in California. But there was not too much of that in Washington at that time.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.