<Begin Segment 21>

AI: Well, following this segregation process, that occurred in August and September of 1943.

BH: Yes.

AI: And shortly after that, you decided that, to try to find a way to leave camp.

BH: No. The sequence is a little different. I had been trying to get out before that. And it just happened that a job came up, and I was scheduled to leave the camp just about the time this, the, the shuffling occurred.

AI: How, how did this job come about?

BH: Well, I don't know this from firsthand information, but I understand, I heard that Dillon Myer, the director of the War Relocation Authority, recognized the professionalism in the Heart Mountain Sentinel. And he was anxious to get me out of the camp. And he had gone to Gardner Cowles, C-o-w-l-e-s, who owned the Des Moines Register and Look magazine and some other publications, and he called up a fellow and said, "We have a guy in the Heart Mountain camp who's a pretty good newspaperman. We're trying to find a job for him. How about offering him a job?" Now, that's hearsay. I don't know what happened. But anyway, they did offer me a job sight-unseen. They did not ask me for my credentials. They just said, "Come on to Des Moines, and go to work."

AI: At the Des Moines Register.

BH: Yes.

AI: So it sounds like this might have been an example of the WRA administration looking for some model people to relocate, to move from camp, relocate, out away from the West Coast to the Midwest or East Coast and perhaps serve as a model to other Nisei?

BH: [Laughs] Well, the policy of WRA was to move as many qualified people out of the camps back into the American mainstream. And of course, it was easiest to find places for people who were well-qualified. For example, if you were an auto mechanic, you could go anywhere in interior America and get a job. If you were a cook, you could get a job. There were very few Nisei newspapermen who had experience, and I don't think that I was looked on as a model. It's just that I happened to be a kind of guy who could go out, and they wanted me to go out and perhaps demonstrate in some way that all of these "slant-eyed Japs" in the camp weren't hostile toward the U.S.

AI: Well, so when you left, it was in October of 1943. And that was you, your wife Alice, your young son Mike, and as I understand, also your mother-in-law?

BH: Yes.

AI: Could you say a bit about what happened to your wife's mother? As I understand it, she did not go to camp with the rest of you. She had been taken separately to --

BH: Yes. She lived in Portland, Oregon. And my own family was in Seattle. During the FBI roundups, Japanese -- Buddhist priests and Japanese schoolteachers, language schoolteachers were particularly picked for detention. She was a widow. And she made a living by teaching piano and setting type in the newspaper, the newspaper her husband had owned. She also taught Japanese language, and that put her in the pick-up category. So she was one of the few women who were detained by the FBI. And she was sent off to Crystal City, Texas -- Seagoville, Texas, first and then Crystal City. And there were some other Japanese women, schoolteachers, there. She was not the only one.

And while there, she noticed a growth on the side of her face, and the doctors in camp couldn't diagnose it. And we were -- my wife and I were very much worried. And we asked that she be allowed to go to the Mayo Clinic for diagnosis. And my wife and I and our son, baby son, were allowed to go there to join her. She spoke very little English. And there we learned that she had Hodgkin's Disease, which in those years, was untreatable. And they said she had two years to live. Well, we then asked that she be transferred from the Texas camp to join us in Heart Mountain. And she was there for about a year or so, and -- maybe less. And when we set out for Des Moines, Iowa, she was allowed to go with us.

AI: That must have been very difficult.

BH: Yes, it was. She was uncomfortable, and the treatment she received in the camp was inadequate. And, but they sent her from the Heart Mountain camp to a hospital in Billings, Montana, where they had better facilities. And they sent her up there for x-ray treatments once a month or something like that.

AI: Well, now, turning now to Des Moines, Iowa --

BH: Yeah.

AI: The job that you were going to was copy editor...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...at the Des Moines Register. And you've written about that and you've written a lit -- some about the reception that your family received there in Des Moines. I'd like to ask, what stands out in your mind about that time when you and your family first arrived in Des Moines?

BH: Well, I went there first. We went from camp to Kansas City, where my brother was. And my wife and son and mother-in-law stayed there while I went on up to Des Moines to look for a place to live. And the Quakers had a hostel there, and I was there about ten days and spending my days looking for a house to rent and working nights. It was a morning newspaper, so I worked nights. And eventually I found a place that, to rent, a rickety old place in the not-very-nice part of town, but housing was very difficult to find.

What impressed me about the Des Moines Register was they hired me sight-unseen. They didn't ask me or test me to see if I could do the job. They just said, when I got there, they said, "Take your coat off, go to work," which I did. And I had the background and the training, so that I caught on very quickly to their, their style of doing things. And they gave me more and more responsibility as the weeks went on. And I'm forever grateful that they had the courage to hire somebody from a detention camp, and do -- to take a role, an increasingly important role in a very important newspaper.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.