<Begin Segment 24>

BH: So you had mentioned little bits of his experience, the Salt Lake experience, it was too dangerous for him, so it was for his own safety, he was put away. You also mentioned, like, the groups of hobos gathering together and making coffee?

KH: Oh, yeah, he told me some of the coffee that he had was really not coffee, it was just water with a little light brown color to it, because he said they would re-boil the coffee grounds over and over in a coffee can. And I did, one Easter Sunday, we were having -- this is during his graduate school days -- we were having a couple of the graduate students in for dinner. He says, "I remember one Easter Sunday," he says, "I was hitchhiking on the Columbia River Highway, and nobody would pick us up, pick me up." And I looked at him, and I said, "Did you have a sailor cap?" He says, "Yeah." He says, "That morning, somebody wanted my rolled up felt hat, and I swapped it with a sailor cap." I says, "You know, I saw you then." It just happened that I was on a Miyashita Sensei orchestra trip, and some of the people in Portland took us on the Columbia River Highway to see the Multnomah Falls. And I know Collette Kawaguchi was sitting beside me in the car, and we both looked at each other and says, "Did you see that? That looked like a Japanese." I says, "Yeah, but you don't think that these Japanese fellows would hitchhike and hobo?" I guess it did, because that was Joe.

BH: So that's your true first encounter.

KH: Yes. And I was what, ten or eleven years old at the time.

BH: Some coincidence.

KH: 'Cause he was, yeah, he was seventeen.

BH: So how did he feel about being homeless?

BH: How did I feel about what?

BH: How did Joe, how did he feel about being homeless?

KH: I think he just took it as an experience. See, he, when he was home, he would be hunting. And he and Dick Grill would kill pheasants and bring 'em home, and says, "Well, it's your turn to take it home. My mom doesn't want to clean any more pheasants." "No, it's your turn to take it home," whatever they shot. Their families must have been getting tired, too, of game.

BH: So he was comfortable with the decision. I remember you mentioned that he never wrote to his family.

KH: No, not, not when he was hoboing. I remember Tosi saying that his mother worried and she would cry wondering what Joe was doing.

BH: And he never thought to inform them? Did he not want to?

KH: Well, it would cost him money to buy a stamp and a postcard. He didn't have that. [Laughs]

BH: So it was out of desire to...

KH: It what?

BH: It wasn't out of desire to distance himself from the family?

KH: No, no. Uh-uh. Because I would say that he was a very good son once, once he got married. I don't know, he and his brother, after Joe hoboed for a while there, he and his brother both joined the CCCs, the Civilian Conservation Corps, and the corps sent five dollars of part of their salary to each family. So that, even that little bit helped the Hashisaki family. But he didn't stay in the Civilian Conservation Corps very long because he decided to go to school. He had a principal, Professor Johnson, I think Professor Johnson had a PhD, but he was a principal at Joliet High School, and he was influential in telling Joe to go on to college. So Joe ended up going to University of Montana in Missoula.

BH: And it was because, when he was in the CCC, you mentioned he had been working on a bison range in Montana?

KH: Uh-huh.

BH: And so that's where he met the people to go to college with.

KH: He, he met some people who were forestry majors, so he thought, "Gee, I think I would like to be a forestry major." So he went to, when he went to Montana, he declared himself as a forestry major. But he was taking math classes, and he liked the math, and Dr. Lennes, the chairman of the department at that time, called him in when he was a junior and says, "Joe," he says, "how come you're a forestry major?" He says, "You've got all these credits in math." He says, "You're gonna graduate in math." Dr. Lennes is very strong-minded and opinionated, and so Joe graduated in math.

BH: So he was trying to be forestry, but he had more credits in math?

KH: Yes. So he graduated as a math major.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.