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TI: Well, before we get to the after the nine months, let's go, so the first five months you were there. Then you, after five months, had your trial, your first trial.

GH: Yeah.

TI: And why don't you describe the trial and what happened. It was a relatively fast trial. But why don't you describe the events that happened of that day?

GH: Well, it happened in October, latter part of October. And it took, well, I guess the selection of the jury and all of that, plus the presentation of the accusation and the defense and the attack -- and incidentally, the government had two, two or three witnesses -- the FBI officer, and the person who was the primary director of the Northwest region of the internment of Japanese, to establish facts. And then they, also to establish fact, the fact that I was of Japanese ancestry -- I had never denied that. But they wanted to make sure that that factor was in there because they felt that that was the key thing. So they had subpoenaed my parents from Tule Lake concentration camp to come in as their witness to prove that I was their child, they are former immigrants of Japan, and therefore, I was of Japanese ancestry. Therefore, I am subject to the orders of the general.

TI: Well, how did it make you feel that the government subpoenaed your parents to the trial from Tule Lake? How did that make you feel?

GH: Well, I didn't mind that at all. In fact, in some ways, I was very pleased that they could testify at my trial. They would never have been able to see my trial. However, they came as the witnesses of the government. And you'd think they'd treat their own witnesses in the fancy hotel or something, or even in a modest hotel. They put 'em in, they put them in jail because they said, "Well, they're not allowed to be in the district freely. Therefore, they have to be under custody." Actually, I learned this later from my, my own team. When they heard that the government was subpoenaing my parents, they asked the government, "Where, where are you going to put them?" Said, "Well, we have to put them in jail because they're not allowed out. We don't want a riot of protestors if we did something wrong. And so we have to put 'em in jail." They says, "Well, they have to be under restriction." "We understand that, but we have, if you don't have any, we have some houses that they could live at within the city, close to appraisal, and you could, if you don't have anybody else, you could deputize these people for the duration of their stay, as deputy sheriffs, and then they'd be under custody." They, if they thought about it for a while, they didn't, it didn't change their views. They said, "No, we can't do that."

And so the first time I knew they were going to be there was one night -- I was still mayor of my tank -- and the night officer brought one fellow in about 10 o'clock at night, and woke, woke some of us up. He was saying, "Hey, where do I put this guy?" And I was just pulling his leg. I said, "Well, why don't you guys bring these prisoners in during the day so we could handle this decently at leisure and so on, instead of in the middle of the night when we're trying to get some sleep?" And then I looked to see who this guy was, who was about half the size of this fairly large officer, and I said, "Hey, that's Dad." It was my dad coming in. And I said, "Well, I've got an empty bunk here, so if you go back and open this cell door, he can walk in."

TI: So it was totally unexpected to have your father --

GH: Yeah. I didn't know that he was going to be at my trial. And he came in. And so we talked very briefly. I said, "You must be tired." So we got -- we'll have plenty of time to talk tomorrow. I'm not going anywhere. And so you take this bunk here. And help you fix the bed and so on. And we'll have a night's sleep. And we'll catch up. So after talking briefly, put him to sleep. And I had -- in many ways, it was a very fortunate break because he never would have understood what my situation was. They were worried, especially my mother, who was placed in the women's tank. There was only one women's tank, whether it was city, state, or federal offense, or for coming in as one of their parties. And so she was in there.

And being generally outgoing and in style, she told me that she walked around, and everybody were talking in knots of two or three or single persons, just reading or... so she just wandered around. And then saw a broken-down upright piano, so she plunked around a little bit. And then played -- nobody was paying attention, so she just played Stephen Foster tunes, "Old Folks at Home" or something. And people began to gather around and started singing. And after a while she got kind of embarrassed, and said, "Somebody else play. All I know are some songs like this and church hymns, and you don't want to hear church hymns, so somebody else play." And says, "No, no. Nobody plays here. You play." They forced her to play some more. So it was a good introduction for her. And in short, she said -- they were there about ten days all told. Ten nights. During the day, sometimes nothing happened and she spent the whole day there. During our hearing, we were in the courthouse. And so when we were leaving, we waited for the, my mother to come down from the women's quarters, and we had to wait about ten minutes. And somebody asked me, "What's holding up the women?" He says, "Well, they said they're helping her get ready, and she'll be down." When she came down, she looked like a queen, hair done. And we didn't know the details of the fingers and so on, but she had a, she had about half a dozen people working on her. First, her first professional treatment. She used to fix herself. She was very experimental and read magazines and so on and would try different things. But it's the first time she had treatment from professionals you know, who, some of them had experience in these areas, and gave her a royal treatment. She came out looking like a queen.

TI: That's good. Was that the first time you had seen her because she was in the women's --

GH: Yeah. And then the rest of that day -- and then I saw her -- I didn't see her again after that day. In the evening --

TI: Out of curiosity, the women that she sort of befriended, or befriended her to help her, what type of inmates would be in the, the women's tank?

GH: Well, they had prostitutes, petty thieves, some of them battery, assault cases. The usual minor defense -- minor offenses. I don't know that there were any murder, murder accusations there at the time or not. But they were the usual, ordinary prisoners awaiting trial. And she knew that they were, some of them were streetwalkers and so on. But she said, "Whatever they are, I never met such warmhearted people." And up to that point, she worried about -- the only thing she read about western jails or places of containment of prisoners was when she read the translation of the Count of Monte Cristo, Victor Hugo's book that came out in summary form each day in the Northern American Times. It's a Japanese paper with a small English section. But she was reading the Japanese serial that came out. And she read about the Count and his prison experiences. So she had an image of those dens that they kept people in the early days, two, three hundred years earlier. And so having this experience, as far as physical handicaps are concerned, she found out that my food was greasy and bunch of cockroaches around and all that sort of thing. But other than that, I wasn't suffering from any personal danger.

TI: So for her to come up to Seattle and see this was actually a relief for her?

GH: Yeah. It was, it was a real benefit in surprise. And then on the other side, Dad, I'm visiting with Dad every day, and getting all kinds of low-downs on the camp experience at Tule Lake. And so, and then of course, he saw that not only was I not beaten up by my fellow inmates, they, you know they would come up and ask, "Hey, can I do this or that," or, "Could you do this?" I'm sort of running the place. And so they couldn't have had a better experience to reduce their concerns about my well-being than that experience. So I thanked them for that in that sense, even though it was an offense against the government, as far as I was concerned, bringing somebody up and putting them in jail, even though they're supposed to be their witness.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.