Densho Digital Archive - Fred Hirasuna Interview (denshovh-hfred-01-0011)

<Begin Segment 11>

LH: If you could, what kind of message would you like to send to those six grandchildren and also in terms of knowing about the Nikkei community, and also... sorry, what was the other part?

ME: Go ahead and ask that one first.

LH: What would you like them to know about the Nikkei community?

FH: I'd like them, I'd like them, for them to know the history and I try to acquaint them with it, but how receptive they are I really don't know, I really don't know.

LH: Why do you think that's so important, though, for them to know that?

FH: Well, I think they should appreciate their heritage. I think we have a heritage that we are proud of, I don't think that being a Japanese American makes you any better than anybody else, but at least makes you an equal of everybody else. I don't want a Japanese American to say, I'm proud to be Japanese American. What is he going to be proud of? He didn't make that; he was born that way. He's Japanese American, so as long as my kids, my grandkids, behave themselves, do what they're supposed to do as good citizens, I'm proud of them. And I will try to inform them what their parents, and grandparents, and great-grandparents did.

LH: And what would you like them to know about the work that you did for this?

FH: To me, that's not important, what I did, because that's too much like bragging.

LH: Well, what about the work that others did for redress?

FH: Yeah, well, I'd like them to know that story. I have a lot of tapes that, about this kind of stuff. I'm going to make them, I haven't been making them watch those. But you know, these darn kids nowadays, they're so busy. The two youngest grandkids, one is fourteen, the other's seventeen going on eighteen. They're in, the oldest one is (5'10"), 200 pounds, plays football, does midget car races, then this coming, right now he's president of the student body at Bullard High School, a high school of about twenty-seven hundred students. He's president, student body president. I'm really proud of him and the younger one is following in his footsteps. I don't know what more I can ask of my grandkids. I told my doctor I want to live four more years, and the reason for that is I want to see my youngest grandkid graduate high school. [Laughs]