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-01-0009

<Begin Segment 9>

AI: Well, you worked in this position, editing the, the newspaper for about a year and a half, I understand.

BH: Yes.

AI: And then your wife was -- learned she was going to be expecting your first child.

BH: Yes.

AI: So at that point, what did you decide to do?

BH: Well, she wanted to come back home to have our baby. And it would have been a good husband of me if I had gone back with her or taken her back. But I had no job in the States, and I had been in the Far East for a year and a half. But, I really could not consider myself an American expert on the Far East, American newspaperman -- expert on the Far East. And we talked it over for a good, long while, and we finally decided that she would go home and have the baby in the States, and I would go on to Shanghai and work a while there, maybe a year, to gain a little bit more background before going back. There was no promise of a job in the States, and I felt that I needed to qualify myself a little better. So she went on home. And I went, I went to Japan with her and put her on the ship, and then I went -- came back Shanghai by way of Manchuria -- Korea, Manchuria, North China.

AI: Can you tell us a bit of what you observed during this trip to Shanghai, especially your observations of the Japanese activities in those areas?

BH: Yes. I was aware, of course, Japanese had invaded and made Manchuria a colony, but I was not prepared to see the number of Japanese carpetbaggers who had gone into Manchuria. In many of the cities, they were the shopkeepers, the barbers, the -- they had moved right in. And the military was everywhere in Manchuria, the Japanese military. And so even though the Japanese said Manchuria was an independent nation, it was obvious that this was a Japanese colony. And I -- one, one time I saw Japanese troops, military people on, on maneuvers. And boy, those, those guys were rough. The noncommissioned officer was slapping a pilo -- private because he was a little slow in getting something done. And I rode on a train across Manchuria, and there were soldiers on board, armed guards. And places like Dairen, I would say was half Japanese. So was Hsinking, where the Japanese, where -- supposedly the seat of the Manchurian government, but the Japanese were running the place. And, I ran into some Nisei who were working for the South Manchurian Railway, and they were being utilized because they could handle English. But they had no authority. They were simply guys who could read and write English.

AI: So then you arrived in Shanghai.

BH: Yes.

AI: And, as I understand, you, you had two jobs there? For a while you were with a newspaper and also --

BH: I worked for -- I wrote a column for a British-owned, English language paper called The Shanghai Times. But I spent more time with a monthly magazine, American monthly magazine called the Far Eastern Review, which was primarily a business and industrial magazine. And I worked there. And I was in Shanghai for about fourteen months.

AI: Well, at, toward, by the end of your time in Shanghai, what was your view of Japan as a political force in Asia? At that time, I think in the United States, there were some growing fears that...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...Japan would indeed, become -- take over...

BH: Yes.

AI: ...as it were, the entire Asian sphere.

BH: Yes.

AI: What -- from your perspective there in Shanghai, how did it look to you?

BH: Just the way you said it. Shanghai is a -- was a city of about three million there, divided into three sectors. One was the International Settlement, one was the French Concession, and one was the Hongkew side, which was -- used to be international, but the Japanese took it over. There must have been 40,000, 45,000 Japanese living in Hongkew. And they were ordinary people, shopkeepers and the like. And Hongkew was separated from the International Settlement by Soochow Creek, with Garden Bridge over it. And the Japanese had troops or guards at the bridge. And they checked everyone going over. And almost every day there would be some incident of a Japanese sentry, the Japanese guard, stopping an Englishman's car or an American's car and being very nasty. And there were a lot of Chinese coolies that went back and forth, and they were required to carry cholera inoculation certificates. And if they didn't have one, they were slapped down, grabbed, shot in the arm, and then kicked and, and told to get on their way. Tremendous arrogance. And we heard what was going on in the interior, and --

AI: In the interior of China?

BH: Of China, yeah. And I was certain that war between the United States and Japan was a matter of when and not whether. And since my family was back in the States, I figured I'd better get the hell out of there.

AI: And that's what you did. So that was about October, then, of --

BH: Well, I started to go back to the States in July. And while I was -- I wanted to go through Japan because I wanted to take another look at Japan before I went back to the States. And while I was en route from Shanghai to Tokyo, the United States embargoed all trade with Japan. And that meant that all shipping between Japan and the United States was stopped. And so I found myself in Tokyo with no way to get back home. So I hung around a month, mooching on the generosity of my friends. And then, hoping that something would happen, and then it became obvious that it would not. So I cabled back to my former boss in Shanghai and said, "Please get me on the first American ship pulling out of Shanghai." And I flew back to Shanghai and found myself at the bottom of a list of 600 people trying to get back home. And a month later, they gave me a berth on a ship, a stateroom for two, and they put two cots in there, and they put four of us in there. But I was glad to get on board. And I landed in San Francisco toward the end of October 1941. And I went back to Seattle, and five weeks later the war came.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2001 Densho. All Rights Reserved.