<Begin Segment 31>

TI: So in August of 1946, you were finally discharged from the army.

HH: Yes.

TI: And at that point, your work with the report was done, you were discharged, and you had your car. So you, your wife, and your daughter drove back to Seattle.

HH: Yes.

TI: And things happened, but I thought let's jump all the way back to Seattle and just talk about, how did it feel for you to come back to Seattle after all these years?

HH: Well, I didn't know how things were in Seattle, because after I saw the Little Tokyo area, all the stores were boarded up and "No Japs" signs and everything else, but by the time I came back, I didn't see any of that. And some of these Japanese offices and businesses around Jackson Street and such were already operating.

TI: Well, so, here's a question. So when you think of what Seattle looked like before the war, right before the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the way it looked, and then now coming back in sort of August, September 1946, was it pretty much the same, or were there differences? And if so, what kind of differences were there?

HH: I don't think it was too much different from what I could remember just before the war, except around where Uwajimaya is now, down in the Chinatown area, that's all fill area. And what I can remember, when we left, it was more or less open and we used to see little shantytown kind of atmosphere. But aside from that, I didn't think it was much different around Pioneer Square area or anything like that.

TI: How about the size of the community? Did it seem about the same before and after the war?

HH: Well, it was a little different as far as the residential area running from Jackson Street, Main Street, which used to have a lot of Japanese stores. Some of the stores had opened up, but I think most of the residential area was up around Twelfth Avenue, Thirteenth, Fourteenth and Yesler Way and around that area more. Because before the war, up in Beacon Hill area, some of the Japanese did have grocery stores and such up there. But there weren't that many Japanese even moving back to their area up that way. Otherwise, I think it just looked like it was more concentrated toward the more Jackson Street and north, rather than south.

TI: And so coming back, where did you decide to live?

HH: Well, originally, my wife and my daughter were living with her parents. It was a three-story wooden building, home, so it was on the corner and it was fairly large, and it was large enough for us. So actually, I stayed there until I could get settled down, because I did not have any work and job or anything like that, so I decided to maybe take advantage of the GI bill to go the University of Washington and take some more... graduate school.

TI: Because you had already, I mean, so before the war, you had already graduated with a degree in political science with a minor in journalism, so you went back to the University of Washington to get a master's degree?

HH: Not a master's, but just because we were given some stipend to attend after the war. So I took kind of graduate courses, general graduate courses, and also working at the newspaper, the Northwest Times.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.