<Begin Segment 37>

TI: I just want to make this observation. We've been talking now over four sessions, and something that keeps coming up are these, sort of what I call these connections. How things like your writing career connected so many things, from Bob Johnson getting you into journalism and how that has been this, sort of this thread for the community: working with the Courier and then the camp newspapers, then the Northwest Times, and the newsletter. It seemed like you were always there in the community helping to write about the community. Another kind of thread has been your involvement with sports, I think you got to know lots of people through sports. And then also there is also that connection in terms of how you got into the OSS. Through Collins at the UW, after you graduated from the UW and then you got recruited and he was then later on your commanding officer for you. Any thoughts about that? Why all these connections in your life?

HH: No, this is one that this friend of mine who is very good in Japanese language, once told me about this word tsunagari. It's a Japanese word which means "connection." And then all of a sudden I started thinking, gee, I do have that kind of a life that seems to kind of have interconnecting kind of deal, just because I was... well, this is after I graduated from high school, is the fact that my friend Bob Johnson asked me to register at the university. And then coming to the university I had to come from Tacoma to Seattle, and the only way I could go to school was to kind of batch or live away from the campus and everything, because I wouldn't be able to finance it, although the tuition was very, very cheap considering what you'd pay now. [Laughs] Anyway, in those days it was very hard. But because of that, I had a chance to work for the Japanese American Courier and also Jimmy Sakamoto.

TI: Right, so you have all these connections. Do you think there was, do you believe in destiny, that it was supposed to be that way?

HH: [Laughs] No, I don't think that way, it's just strange that I'm connected in that way. All through my life after high school, it just seems strange in a way, because even when I was in Japan with the U.S. Bombing Survey, and we had to go north into Sendai area from Tokyo. On the way, we had to go through one the provinces which is Fukushima, which is just north of Tokyo, and as we were on the so-called National Highway, passed through this little town called Nihonmatsu in Fukushima...

TI: Right, where you met your wife's family.

HH: Grandmother.

TI: Grandmother.

HH: And also two aunts right there because my truck and the jeep that we were taking on this trip just happened to stop in front of the home of my wife's...

TI: I know, and it seems like all these, what it reminds me of is almost like a novel. You know how novels have these connections throughout, and your life story to me read or came out almost like a novel in terms of all the threads and different things and all the connections, and that's what struck me.

HH: Yes. So it just seemed like whatever I did, I was kind of involved in more or less historical events, and I'm very glad that I'm able to live through this whole life of mine. I'm now eighty-eight years old, and it seemed like it just had this series of connection kind of thing that went through my life after high school.

TI: So looking back eighty-eight years, any regrets in your life?

HH: No, I can't say I have any regrets, but I feel fortunate that I was able to live through that period of time, with the war, which we thought would never happen, and also my life. If I didn't come to Seattle to go to the University of Washington, I can't figure out now what would I have done. But that's part of my life, that what happened was just more like a series of interacting events, which had some quite significant historical...

TI: No, I agree. As you probably know, this is one of our longer interviews, but I think it was because there was so much historical importance in this interview. So I want to thank you for taking all this time to be interviewed. It's been a real sort of pleasure and honor on my part to do this. So thank you.

HH: Okay, thank you.

<End Segment 37> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.