<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Okay, but I want to move on with your story. So you come back, school, was it back at the University of Washington? On the GI Bill.

HN: Yeah.

TI: And you finished your biology degree?

HN: Yeah, yeah, finished, yeah. And continued working in the Health Sciences.

TI: Before we go there, so you had left Seattle for quite a while. How was Seattle different when you came back after the war and after your military service? What did you see? Like the Japanese community, how had it changed?

HN: Japanese community?

TI: Yeah, in Seattle. What was different?

HN: It wasn't much different. There was still discrimination, I was shocked. I was angry. Even after the war, when the people came back to Seattle, especially in the Kent area, valley area, especially, "No Japs allowed." "Japs go home." As a veteran, I was angry. In fact, we told, Mike Lowry was a county councilman, and there was a professor from Utah, University of Utah staying at Edo Sasaki's house. Smith, I think his name was Smith, anthropologist. They said, "Let us go to the Kent Valley public meetings," they were having meetings to keep the "Japs" out. "We don't want Japs here." Especially led by Smith Dairy, which is still existing there. Smith Dairy was very, very anti-Japanese at that time. But thanks to Mike Lowry and this Professor Smith told us Nisei veterans to stay out, stay home, "Let us do the, let us go to the meetings and educate the public about the Nisei GIs and Nisei soldiers, veterans, and the Isseis." Anyway, finally, I think they were having a lot of meetings. After five or six months, it finally died out. People stopped coming, because they were doing all the propaganda work for us. It had to be. It had to be favorable, you know.

TI: So even though there was discrimination, there were friends who would come out and...

HN: Oh, definitely. Mike Lowry for one, and Professor Smith, Elmer Smith, yeah, that was his name, Elmer Smith. But anyway... but even in Seattle, there were signs, Masako Shibuya told me this and other people told me that there were signs, housing was hard to find. Jobs were hard to find. Masako Shibuya said they saw a house for sale or for rent, they went and said, "Oh, you got a sign there." "Oh, I forgot to take it down." But that time, Masako was, employer was Ken McDonald, the lawyer in downtown. Oh, that's where Sadie Yamasaki comes in. See, Sadie was working for McDonald, okay. I knew both of them. Masako took over from Sadie when Sadie left. Masako went and said, "for sale," "for rent," so Ken McDonald, next day, went up there, the same place, and saw the sign, "Sure, it's available." Discrimination.

TI: That's a good, good story. You know, there's another story -- I'm kind of jumping around a little bit, but I've read about that you at one time had a Japanese flag?

HN: Yeah. I returned the flag to Japan, yeah.

TI: Can you tell that story?

HN: It's in my, it's in my book.

TI: Right, can you tell me that story?

HN: Yeah. Since the flag is a, well, it's a souvenir, I brought it home as a souvenir. It had no military value because all it had was names of the friends, the well-wishers that gave him the flag when he left from Tokushima Prefecture, the one I interrogated. So I picked up this flag because it had no military -- otherwise you had to turn it in. I brought it home unwrapped, folded, it was folded. For whatever reason, I never unfolded it and displayed it. I just kept it folded. And one day, one year later or I don't remember, somebody from Japan came to UW for a conference, PTA conference or whatever it was, Mr. Tsutsui came. Somebody asked me to take him, show him the UW. Somebody in Seattle asked me. So since I was at UW, I showed him around. Then I told my father, "I wonder," something that said maybe we would ask Mr. Tsutsui to take this flag back to Japan. Oh, yeah, he also wanted to go to Chicago, so my father said, "Well, let him visit Dr. Ishibashi," the one that was at the, you know, when Pearl Harbor news came. Yeah, he wanted to go to Chicago, so my father referred him to Dr. Ishibashi in Chicago. But at the same time, since we were getting a little more familiar with each other, said, "Gee, the flag was there, and whatever it is," I told my dad, "I want to, let's ask Mr. Tsutsui to take the flag back to Japan." It took eight years because there was no TV then, just radio, newspaper. It took eight years, I got the record, the chronology of the dates. After eight years, the brother saw the news about the brother's, Sano-san, Seiichi Sano, flag. And finally the brother saw the newspaper, and contacted the brother, who was alive. Well, anyway, I got together with him in Tokyo. He was still alive, he came back. So that flag is enshrined in the Tokushima City, the mountain. That's written in my book.

TI: Oh, so you were able to --

HN: Oh, so you knew about this.

TI: Yeah, reunite the flag with --

HN: Yeah. So he donated the flag to his museum up in the Bizen Mountain top, the museum. There's a pagoda museum, they call it pagoda. And I met with them, and with my cousin in Tokyo, had lunch with them. That story is... yeah.

TI: You mentioned your book, and I should just mentioned, yeah, you wrote a book some years back. And I did read it when it came out, just to let you know.

HN: You did?

TI: I did.

HN: Oh, okay. Yeah, so Sadie, yeah, that's right. That was Ken McDonald, yeah.

TI: Okay, so Hiro, I want to bring you back now, back to your life story. So you graduated from the University of Washington in biology, you worked at Health Sciences, and I used to see you there because I was also a student at the University of Washington.

HN: Did I see you at the U?

TI: Yes, I used to see you out there, too.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.