<Begin Segment 7>

AI: Before we go on with the process of your career here, I want to step back a little bit and ask about your involvement with the JACL because at the same time that you were becoming a journalist, you were working for the Courier.

BH: Yeah.

AI: Of course, Jimmie Sakamoto and the Courier were very key in the development of the JACL as well.

BH: Yes.

AI: So I was hoping you could tell a little bit about your participation then and what you saw developing within the organization.

BH: Well, the JACL in the '30s was a very small, weak, and relatively inactive organization. They had a lot of big ideas, big ideals, but very little of the wherewithal to carry out those things. And you couldn't be around Jimmie very long without becoming involved in JACL, and so I did go to JACL meetings. And, oh it was a big turnout when there were fifteen people there. And I remember JACL would invite political candidates, city councilman candidates and others, to come and talk to the meeting. And there would be fifteen of us sitting there. And we had to make a lame excuse, "We're sorry we couldn't get more people out, but every one of these people belongs to five or ten other organizations, and they'll carry the -- your message back." Well, that was a lot of baloney, but that's about all the JACL could do. And most of the time was spent in saying, "How can we get people to attend our meetings? How can we get membership?" Without really having a program that would attract people. And we had -- the JACL at the time had a very vague objective of being "Better Americans in a Greater America." What did that mean? We didn't know. So I was one of the spear-bearers. And there were people like Jimmie Sakamoto and Clarence Arai and Shiro Hashiguchi and Takeo Nogaki, who were a little older than I, and they were the leaders.

AI: At that time, do you think the JACL really was fulfilling an important function then in the '30s?

BH: Yes, to the extent that it was trying to make the Nisei aware of their responsibilities and opportunities as American citizens. They were not very effective, but it was a lot better than having nothing at all like that.

AI: I want to turn to something that you wrote in your book on the Nisei about the search for identity.

BH: Yeah.

AI: And you wrote, "In their schools, however, they had been taught to believe in the American doctrine of freedom of opportunity. They shared in the American dream of progressing as far as their God-given abilities and energies could take them, yet the reality was that outside the classroom, America was a racist society, where skin pigmentation and facial conformations often were more a factor than a person's ability. And when the Nisei began to suspect that for them, what they had been taught in school was largely a myth, the questions were inevitable."

And I'm wondering how much that was a, a personal reaction of your own. It, it sounds as though during your own college years, you did suspect that you were not fully accepted as an American...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...by the majority of white American society.

BH: Yes. I think there was a general awareness of that. And you could tell that at the University of Washington, where there were fifty, sixty Japanese American kids, and 95 percent of them belonged to the Japanese Student Club. And when they (got) out of class, they would rush down to the Japanese Student Club and, and have lunch and then sit down and play bridge or chat among themselves, and there was very little effort to integrate themselves with their fellow students. And I, I was very strongly against accepting that sort of segregation. I never became a member of the Studen -- Japanese Student Club. And I tried to mix with my Caucasian classmates. But at the same time, I was working at the Courier and trying to make enough money to keep going to the school, so that there -- I did not have a great social life. But it didn't take long, and, and you didn't need to be very smart to realize that there were these barriers.

My friend Charles Kambe, K-a-m-b-e, he lived in the University District, not too far from the university. Very popular in high school. And as a senior, he got an invitation to attend something at a fraternity house at the University of Washington. And he went there, and the guy who opened the door said -- asked him what he wanted. I suppose he would've -- he was intending to say, "Look, the Japanese schoolboys work -- come in the back door," or whatever. But Chuck said, "I was invited to your party." And the guy said, "Oh, I'm sorry. There must have been a terrible mistake." His name was Kambe, K-a-m-b-e. And obviously they thought he was a Caucasian. And he was popular in high school and a good scholar. But that was the sort of barrier that we ran into.

AI: So in some instances, it was very clear that the barriers were there.

BH: Oh, yes. Yes. We grew up with it. There was no disillusionment after going to college. We knew that it was there.

AI: The reason I wanted to ask about this is because I think some, in some ways, society has changed over these decades since then, and to convey to students now how different the climate was racially at that time in the '30s, even before World War II started.

BH: Yes. Well, at the University of Washington, as I recall, there were only two people, two Japanese Americans on the faculty. One was Frank Miyamoto, who was just beginning, just getting out of college, and he made very good friends with the dean of the sociology department. And he was encouraged to go on. Later he got his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago as I recall. But the only other one was Henry Tatsumi, who taught Japanese language. So there were no Japanese Americans teaching English literature or chemistry or engineering or anything like that.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.