Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Tokio Hirotaka - Toshio Ito - Joe Matsuzawa Interview
Narrators: Tokio Hirotaka, Toshio Ito, Joe Matsuzawa
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Bellevue, Washington
Date: May 21, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-htokio_g-01-0008

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AI: In fact, can you talk a little bit about that, when Tom Matsuoka came to Bellevue?

TH: Let's see. He married my sister Kaz in 1926 -- that's the year she graduated. He coached our Seinenkai team in baseball. And he was a quite, very good coach. He was manager of the Bellevue Vegetable Growers Association, so, yeah, he had something to do -- quite a bit to do -- with the economy. But I think you've got a lot of information from him direct. But he was pretty important in the Bellevue community.

TI: Yeah, he was an all-around community leader in all areas of the Bellevue Japanese community in those days.

TH: Yeah.

AI: Why would you say that happened? What was it about him that...

JM: Well, he was really a person that was just a natural leader. When we were pretty young, most of us -- I wouldn't say most of us -- a lot of us lost our fathers, while they were young. So that left a lot of us young people to fend for ourselves. And we used to always go to him, or he would give us advice. Even the Issei respected him for his thoughts, and leadership, so that's how he got involved. He had his farm to take care of. But, yet he went out and tried to help the Issei because he was able to speak English quite well and he was able to have contact with businessmen in Seattle, and to do business for the Bellevue Vegetable Growers Association. So he knew quite a few high-powered people in Seattle, and that's the way that he was, all during the time that he was in Bellevue. And that is... one reason why he was picked up by the FBI very first thing. Because he was a leader, not because he was disloyal or anything like that.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.