<Begin Segment 23>

TI: So I'm going to switch gears here, because we only have a few more minutes on this tape. Taking a, sort of a step back, I mean, you know the Nikkei community, you sort of grew up, and yet, at times, you're a great observer of the Nikkei community because you've, you're not necessarily always in it. And so from your perspective, when you look at Japanese Americans and its sort of evolution over the generations, where do you see, what do you see happening to the Nikkei community. When you look at your son's, sort of, generation, and the following generations, what thoughts do you have about that?

LH: I'm ecstatic. I see them not just joining all professions, but becoming leaders in any number of professions. And what I see amongst younger Americans is they look at the person, they very seldom look at the face. They, they think of the worth of the individual. And I think right now, the difficulties I had in my marriage as far as relatives are concerned, and my son, who's forty-five, though like of that generation has lived with various young ladies for years at a time, is finally, for his first time, getting engaged, has gotten engaged, is getting married in January, a very prominent family from Arizona, we have met the family. And you know they are accepting me as a human being; they're not looking at me as an American of Japanese ancestry. They're interested in my background, they want to know more about it, but their association, and true interest in me is as a human being, as the father of this young man that their daughter is going to marry. And I see, whether it's Secretary of Transportation or Commerce or whatever role that Mineta had, you had General Shinseki, a Sansei, I guess, screwed by the President and Rumsfeld, because he says, "No, we've got to start with several hundred thousand troops in Iraq." No second term for him, and it's traditional that the, they get a second term.

TI: As Army Chief of Staff.

LH: As Army Chief of Staff. What else can you mention? Oki, Mr. Oki? I don't know the guy, but Microsoft? I mean, I don't know if he's a billionaire, but, you know, he's got more money than all of us will ever even think about. Whether it's in the sciences... even in my generation, though, I think of the Ueki brothers, and I think of Calvin Ninomiya, I think of any number of others, whether it's in academia, in the sciences, did well. If they weren't of that generation, they would have done extremely well. And I've never regretted the fact that I didn't become an ambassador. I mean, I don't feel that it was a glass ceiling. It might have been, to speak honestly. But to obtain the rank of consul general, which it literally is, I am the Honorable. I never use that title. It's just like Helen Amerman, our teacher in camp, she doesn't use "Dr." She's a Ph.D. from Chicago, University of Chicago. Man, that's tough in those days. And, but she said, "But there, only medical doctors are called doctors." Well, many Honorables don't use the title either, but legally I am. And the wedding invitation that was just issued by my son's fiance's family shows me as the Honorable. But, you know, could I, should I have been an ambassador? Could I have filled the shoes of an ambassadorship? Well, maybe to a minor country, not to a major country. Literally sixty percent or more are political appointees anyway. Only a third or less work up from the foreign service into ambassadorships. Okay, good.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.