<Begin Segment 9>

LH: So what do you think the legacy of the redress movement will be for the Nikkei community in the next, you know, twenty years, say?

FH: Difficult to say, but I think as it was repeated at the meeting several times, it shows what a group can do when they get together and really push, it shows that, I think. We may never have an occasion to vote for something like this again. And I said then and I say now I really think we are a disappearing group. You know, our kids are intermarrying and I have six grandkids, three are so-called "pure Japanese," and three are hapas. And I see these hapa kids, they're gonna out-marry. I don't think they're going to marry Japanese. They are gonna out-marry. You're gonna have quarters and sixteenths, but even after, in the quarters, sometimes even in the halves, you can't see any Japanese in their face at all. And in a couple of generations from now, only time you will think a person has Japanese blood he might have a Japanese surname which kept on. And to me, I can't blame the kids, because when a person is one-sixteenth say Japanese, he can't ignore the other fifteen-sixteenths of his heritage. Like a black person, they say that if you're one-sixteenth black, you're black, but I don't believe that. If you're one-sixteenth black, you're fifteen-sixteenth something else. And that should rule. You know when evacuation time came, they said anybody with one-sixteenth Japanese blood was subject to evacuation, that he was Japanese. They based it purely on blood, not on your actions, but blood. And that's entirely wrong.

LH: Well, do you think that the Japanese American community, regardless of whether or not there was, if it is a disappearing population or disappearing community, do you think that redress will be something that will be felt and you know, motivate people while it's still around?

FH: I don't know how to answer that really. It might. Now, I try to get my grandkids to read stories about our generation, but it's hard to -- every time a book comes out I buy one and give it to them, and tell them to read it, but whether they actually read it or not, I don't know. And my two youngest grandkids they're half, hapas, their associates are all non-Japanese. They go to non-Japanese friends' houses and I don't think, I'm almost a hundred percent sure they're gonna out-marry. They're gonna marry non-Japanese. And that's the way the whole population of Japanese is going that way. I don't think you can find a family now, not a family, but very few families that don't have some kind of out-marriage in their families. And you know how prevalent it is, even now. They say what, 50, 60 percent out-marry, so I think we're going to be assimilated that way, I think.

CK: And there's no renewal because we don't have immigration from Japan, although I've heard of some Shin Issei.

FH: Shin Issei, Yeah, there are a few like that, but not enough.

CK: So what do you think will happen then to "Japanese Americans?"

FH: I think we're gradually going to disappear.

CK: Disappear.

FH: I think so, I think so. We're going to be assimilated, so-called, I think.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.