Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Gordon Hirabayashi Interview I
Narrator: Gordon Hirabayashi
Interviewers: Becky Fukuda (primary), Tom Ikeda (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: April 26, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-hgordon-01-0002

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BF: So he was a Christian in Japan?

GH: Yes. I'll get to that when we get to, what preparations did he have in coming. There was a teacher, who had a private school. And I guess there were enough that he could survive. He quit public school teaching because he wanted to teach other things that wasn't in the curriculum. In other words his religious -- he was like a minister. And in fact I found out in talking to this historian that one of the important situations in this leader's career was when he ran into Dad's teacher and converted him to being a committed disciple. That, that's how important this teacher was. He was a leading disciple of this leader called -- his name will come to me -- the teacher's name was, that'll come to me too...

BF: He's a Christian leader is what you're...

GH: Yeah, yeah.

BF: ...that is so rare in Japan.

GH: And, that's minority. This was, and this leader taught one -- he was in the Protestant movement. So it wasn't a question of Catholicism versus Protestantism. But among the Protestants, like when he went abroad, Uchimura, Uchimura Kanzo...

BF: Is he the teacher, your father's teacher or...

GH: He's the leader...

BF: ...or the leader?

GH: He's the leader, and his chief disciple, in retrospect turned out to be the teacher of Dad...

BF: Yeah.

GH: ...in his group. And he also taught my mother. So...

TI: And your dad's teacher, is that Iguchi...?

GH: Iguchi Sensei, yeah, Iguchi. And he, he only lived 'til about his own fiftieth year. So relatively, he died early.

BF: Yes.

GH: But I visited his, I mean because of the letters that came in and support that came in, there's a little museum in his honor. Iguchi, I don't know what they call the museum, but it's a museum of Iguchi and his papers, pictures, Dad's groups and so on, they're spread out over there in this museum.

BF: So he had a great influence on many people?

GH: Yeah, quite a few. Particularly until the close of open immigration, which is 19 -- well see, 1923, my mother came in, in 1914, so World War I interfered with the flow of immigration, too. And then before they could really recover from that, the anti-Asian immigration restriction came in, 1923.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.