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TI: I want to ask a question. This may be a stretch. But I'm gonna, from the last four interviews and the year that I've got to know you, I mean you are a man of very high principles and lofty ideals. I mean you really think about these things. And there's a price that you pay for that. An example is when your mother pleaded with you not to go forward with defying the exclusion order, 'cause she felt that the family needed to be together. And, and I'm thinking about your wife, and perhaps feeling that, that you may have at times focused more on the ideas of doing certain things. Did you ever consider during these two days of discussion to think, would you change? Would you do something differently? That the price is too high for you to pursue some of these really high principled ideas? And, and, and yeah, what do you think about that?

GH: Well, sometimes in retrospect I thought of those things. But at the time, I thought, maybe it's a time to explore, because we didn't explore those things. You know, we're following another path with the attendant requirements of that path. After, we separated and then within about, within a year we were legally divorced. We didn't wait the maximum time of this and that. Once the decision was made, we were both interested in cleaning, clean cut, and go on with it. I had a easier path because I'm going on with my career. She had to, you know, make major changes. I was responsible for her apartment and so on. She wanted to move out. She says, "This place, with all its memories and so on, is not the place for me to be thinking of a new path." So she'd rather move. Since I was continuing some basic parts, you know, at the school, it was, it was fine that I would stay. And then, when she got a full time job, it, it was, she has many of the skills that you saw in Susan in terms of mentality, and quick decision, sharp analysis, and so on. So I guess I like that sort of thing in a woman. [Laughs] And I didn't know all those things about her except that I responded to her. When I'm seeing her in my early relationship with Susan, I must have seen some of those things that I admired in Susan, and in Mom.

I would find it difficult to live constantly with Mom. It required a man like Dad who, who, who would say, "Well on this, I'll just let it go right through." [Laughs] And he doesn't stoke the fire, he just lets it go, and lets it burn out, and does other things. And I think she counted on the fact that he's, she, she can blow up and it won't destroy the marriage. [Laughs] And she made good decisions, so Dad counted on her for that sort of insights. When he, when he let, when I was around five, during the winter month after all the crops went out, and then the time of getting stumps out, and the drainage fixed, and this and that, and planting seeds in the greenhouse, and up where we rented greenhouse space. That was what we were doing. And there's no income during that period. So the grocer and the fertilizer, seed people, all those people have to carry the farmers. Not just our farm, but all the farmers around there. And that was the life. And Dad liked the kind of being on your own, living your principles, expressing it where it needed it and so on, instead of just interacting business all through the period. During that winter, they, I think she finally said, "Let's, let's try something else this summer, I mean this winter." And they went in and talked to their former, Japanese, former missionary to Japan, kind of a Bible, full gospel type Bible-centered couple.

TI: Right, I remember this story. And then it took Mr. Katsuno to bring 'em back.

GH: That's right. He came in towards the end of that period. And for the first time they had money during the winter, you know.

TI: But was this a situation where, where your, so your father liked a certain thing, but this is where your mother sort of exerted her sort of will to do something different...

GH: Yeah.

TI: ...than what your father...

GH: Yeah. They're doing something different because possibility of maybe changing careers. Dad got a job at West Seattle Saw Mill.

TI: Right, and your mother did not enjoy farming? She wanted to...

GH: Well that's right, she was trapped. And, and she had, she had too many talents and interests to survive without protesting.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.