Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Hideo Hoshide Interview II
Narrator: Hideo Hoshide
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: February 1 & 2, 2006
Densho ID: denshovh-hhideo-02-0032

<Begin Segment 32>

TI: Okay, so you came back to Seattle, went back to general graduate school courses, so you got a stipend for that, but you also worked for a community newspaper called the Northwest Times. So let's talk about that a little bit. So what was the Northwest Times? Was this in existence before the war, or did it just start after the war?

HH: No, the Northwest Times was started by Budd Fukei and when he learned that I had come back to Seattle, he had already started a paper which was just a weekly at the time, and he wanted me to work with him on the paper. And originally, it was like, well, I thought maybe he would want me to go in together like a partnership, but since I had to go to school and everything else, I just kind of went to just help him get started getting the paper going. So I thought maybe that might be something I could be doing after the war. But that was what the newspaper was. And also, I was surprised in a way that he called the paper Northwest Times, not Seattle. A community paper, he expanded out more into outlying areas or northwest, even including Yakima and Wapato, that area, too. We had some, just voluntary-type correspondence that they would send a little news. So it was more local Seattle news, but there was nothing else there. But all in English.

TI: But it sounded like at some point Budd Fukei had ambitions for this to be much larger, and by calling it the Northwest Times, he saw it more as a regional. And you also mentioned at the very end that it was English-only also. And so how, so who would support this? This would be primarily the Niseis who had come back that would read this and support it with advertising dollars and subscriptions.

HH: Yes.

TI: So how well did it do during this period?

HH: Well, I don't know the financial side of it, but it was hard to operate because he had to get all the press and the linotype machine and equipment that it was not all paid off and everything like that, he was just getting started. So I'm sure that it must have been hard to get support of the... well, he had to get support of the businesses, and they were also just getting started, too, but we did get going and able to get at least a fairly good paper for the community.

TI: Now, were you working in a similar way on the sports side?

HH: Yes. I handled the sports, I was more or less listed as a sports editor after that.

TI: Now, was Budd's idea also to start up sports leagues under the Northwest Times?

HH: No, there was nothing like that, because it was hard enough to just get the local paper and get it mailed out and all this.

TI: So I'm curious, so the Northwest Times was an English-only, and you were working on it. Before the war, there was the Japanese American Courier, which was English-only, too. Was there ever any discussion about starting up the Japanese American Courier after the war in Seattle with Jimmy Sakamoto?

HH: No, there was not, because Jimmy Sakamoto was in Minidoka, and he had, after the relocation centers were closed, 1945, I think it was. See, now, I'm at late August in '46 that I came back. So they had a little more chance to get reorganized again, the churches and such. So really, I came back much later than some of the other people.

TI: But did Jimmy Sakamoto come back to Seattle?

HH: Well, then I know Jimmy came back, but he was not working, I mean, not putting the paper out again, continuing. He was working, apparently, with the St. Vincent...

TI: Yeah, St. Vincent de Paul.

HH: de Paul, yes. It was close to Lake Union, and to answer phones or some of the requests, the office work.

TI: So why do you think Jimmy Sakamoto didn't try to start another newspaper after the war?

HH: Well, I think it may have something to do with the evacuation and such, all the JACL people who were leaders were not too... to be able to become leadership, like newspaper editor and such, publisher and such. I don't think it entered his mind that he would continue, because he wasn't really that stable before the war, too, because it was hard to get the readership -- not the readership, but paid subscriptions by the younger generation, 'cause the majority were still in school, not even out of high school.

TI: Okay, so it sounds like Jimmy Sakamoto and the other JACL leaders, before the war, they were more in a leadership position, but the whole wartime experience, what happened, it sounds like, that their leadership role was diminished. And so after the war, Jimmy didn't start another newspaper partly because of that, because he wasn't really a leader.

HH: I think so, and at the same time, it might have been very hard to get started with getting all the equipment and things like that, that maybe he was not able to finance it. But since he had a chance to work for St. Vincent de Paul, which was a Catholic organization...

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.