<Begin Segment 6>

TI: Boy, based on what you told me about your mother and her activities, her death must have been hard for the, not only for the family, but the community also, 'cause she was so active.

JI: Oh, yeah. When, the funeral procession was several blocks long, it was an enormous outpouring of people, many of whom I didn't know, most of them Japanese. The only Caucasians that I recall being there were people my father had worked with in the pharmaceutical company. And it was interesting, when my dad, when relocation happened, my dad didn't have to go because of his age. They took older people, but they were things like high school, Japanese school principals and that sort of thing that by their work made them suspect. But my father had not been associated with anything like that, and was not even... well, as a matter of fact, I was one of the few of my contemporary Nisei friends who didn't have to go to Japanese school. Almost all went to Japanese school, and I was very handicapped when I went to Japan because I didn't know Japanese that well.

TI: Let me back up a little bit. So you mentioned your father not going. Are you talking, I think you're talking about that initial roundup of the Issei leaders that were picked up by the FBI?

JI: Yeah.

TI: Talking about that. So he wasn't picked up there.

JI: No. And because of his age, they said he didn't have to go. And Mr. Hyland, the head of the pharmaceutical company, invited him to stay with, with them during, until the crisis was over.

TI: So let me understand this. So "when the crisis is over," so during the war, you're talking about?

JI: Yeah.

TI: So he was able to stay in Los Angeles?

JI: Yeah, he could have, but he opted to go with the family.

TI: I see.

JI: But, and what would he do? 'Cause Mr. Hyland lived in Beverly Hills in a big house, and completely foreign territory to the way we live.

TI: But even -- this is interesting -- but even if he wanted to stay in Los Angeles with that invitation, I, I don't see how he could have. I mean, wasn't the orders that all people of Japanese ancestry had to leave the coast?

JI: I guess they said all, but they probably had exceptions, if you're such-and-such an age, and he was seventy-something. And essentially, I wanted to indicate the regard with which he was held even though Mr. Hyland was very kind to him in many ways, even though... well, but at least he offered him the opportunity. And you know, we would go and, as a family, would go and visit him often. Not often, but maybe three or four times in my memory.

TI: And going back, just, you're talking about your mother's funeral. Was there anything that you heard or saw that surprised you, that you learned a little bit about your mother during the funeral in terms of maybe someone coming up and saying something to you that you didn't know about your mother or something? Or just the fact that there were so many people there, did that surprise you?

JI: No... yeah, I was really grief -- I hadn't cried when I heard about her dying, and then my brother told her that she, told me that, took me aside and just, and told me that she had killed herself. And then I felt a great deal of guilt, partly because I hadn't gone to see her in the sanitarium on the Easter. As a matter of fact, I was riding a bicycle down in Palm Springs. So I felt guilt about it, but I was overcome by grief at the funeral. But it didn't, tears didn't come until, until the funeral. So I, I don't know. I still feel some guilt about, about that. And I know she will have forgiven me, but I still feel that I had done wrong. The only new revelation about my mother was listening to Hiro, Hiro Hishiki telling me about, about the early days of my mother and the community. He was much closer to the Japanese community that I was, even though I was editing, sports editor of the Kashu Mainichi, which was Japanese-language paper in the Japanese community. And I really didn't know... I reported on the community, but I wasn't of the community, particularly.

TI: And when you say "Japanese-language," so it had both an English and a Japanese section?

JI: Yeah, yeah.

TI: And so you were the sports editor for the English section.

JI: Yeah. Like, same as Bill Hosokawa was with the newspaper here.

TI: Right, right. I think the Courier here.

JI: Yeah.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.