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MA: I actually wanted to ask you also about your views about the state of Japanese American studies in particular, now.

JH: Well, I'm still concerned about, you know, whether, where it's going. It's very difficult to tell these days. The, there's always been transformation within the Japanese American community all along, and it's kind of difficult to figure out where it's going. I still participate in the various kinds of activities like at the Museum and at the Japanese American Historical Society in San Francisco, and I go to all the festivals and that kind of stuff. But it's hard for me to tell where the current generation is going. And then, of course, the culture and the communication system and all that's rapidly transforming now. So I'm wondering where it's going.

MA: Especially after the Nisei generation, you know, is gone. What will happen?

JH: Well, at the Museum, I keep saying that, well, our job is to explain as best we can what happened to the Issei in the context of what was happening to them in the whole society. We have to do the same thing for the Nisei, the conditions changed, the transformation from the Issei community to the Nisei community. And then there have been changes with the Sansei, particularly things like the strike and things like that. But the Museum puts all these kinds of things out so that people understand what happened and why in the context of their times. And it's for the next generation to look at all this, decide for themselves in the future context what they want to do. But we can't tell them what to do. The best we can do is say, "Hey, look at what happened, and what's there, and what meaning does it have for you? How do you want to take all this and alter your own lives to suit what you want to do?" As far as I'm concerned, that's what the Museum is there for.

MA: So you see the role of, like, community-based organizations being pretty strong and continuing Japanese American studies?

JH: Yeah. But for them, I don't expect them to just emulate and copy things as if the context of their times is not changing, you know. So I think we're not only in the communication field, but globalization. This is why this is quite interesting for Lane and I to be involved in the International Project, where we got funds from the Japan Foundation to do this International Project. So we gathered together scholars from North, Central, South America and Japan, we had all kinds of seminars, and so we had to have interpreters, 'cause there was Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese and English. Although these were professionals, they weren't academicians, so that I could tell between English and Japanese that the interpretation wasn't exactly on, you know. It's like looking at subtitles on movies, you know.

MA: And what was the focus of this conference that you were talking about?

JH: Oh, well, we have a book called New Worlds, New Lives that was a result of the project, and it's, Akemi Kikumura and Lane and I are the co-editors. And we wanted to compare the different kinds of adaptations, innovations, on the part of overseas Japanese communities. I'll give you a for-instance. The women got -- you know, we split them up into smaller groups. You know, it's hard to get academicians to agree on anything. And here you have four different languages to deal with, in addition. And it's interdisciplinary. I have enough trouble trying to get academicians in one discipline in one language to cooperate on anything. Well, so anyway, we got the women to form a group, and Audrey Kobayashi from Canada was talking about all the, the majority of immigrants to Canada these days are young women. And what's happening is that they're leaving Japan to escape Japanese paternalism. And when they get over there, of course, they run into Euro American paternalism. [Laughs] So Audrey starts talking to the ones from Mexico and Peru and Brazil, and they're talking about their Mediterranean type paternalism. And so it's a real, kind of an interesting comparison between what happens when you get one culture bumping up against so many others, and then we learn out of this. Again, we find out what's happening, what people are doing in the context of where they're, where they're at. And I think this is important things for the current generation to look at. And this is only the first step in research of this sort. But because of this project, I was able to travel back down to Latin America, and of course, Lane is fluent in Spanish, although when we were in Brazil, the taxicab drivers would say, "Hey, you're speaking Spanish with a Mexican accent," you know. But Lane and I went to Brazil and to Peru, Ecuador, and Guatemala when he was about a sophomore in college.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.