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TI: So do you want to go to your second, your second one? You said there were two decisions.

HN: Second, yeah. Well, after the interview, I was so exhilarated, I was so, I felt I was reborn, and then I ran into Reverend Paul Nagano, who was at Baptist church. He testified, and then when I met him a day or two after, I told him, "Pastor Paul," we called him Pastor Paul, I said, "Gee, I feel so exhilarated, I feel reborn. I feel..." he said, "Hiro, exhilarated, that's catharsis." Catharsis. I learned a new word, catharsis. From then, strange reason, I used to take a bus to UW every day, lot of memories of my past life, about my culture, my legacy. So from then on, my mind was just filled up with my past life, I started to take notes. Well, to make a long story short, I ended up with about ten notebooks of notes. I started to compartmentalize into different categories. I had about ten or twelve notebooks. I couldn't help it, I couldn't stop. All my, you might say, my past life was coming to... well, I started to say, "Well, I'm going to write down these things. I got lots of material at home, too. So I started to organize them. Then came the second hard decision: what am I going to do with it? [Laughs] What am I going to do with this, all this stuff, my past, about my heritage, my culture, my legacy. What am I going to do with all this? Tell my kids, "Go down the basement, and in a box, there's a lot of notes about my heritage, my culture, our legacy"? They're not going to look at it. If you got time, go down to the basement and look. My grandkids are going to go look at it? Then my second most important decision was, I was poor in English, my worst subject. I got D's. I tell you, I admit, I got D's in English, my worst subject. Even in college, I had a hard time. I was not a writer. Not being a writer, I had hatred, aversion. Not that I was poor at it, I hated it. So it was a struggle between my cultural value to pass on my culture, heritage, legacy, to my kids, grandkids, or have to write it. You know, I thought about that. Maybe I should have had a writer. I never thought about it.

TI: No, I think, I think what you did was fine. Because what you did was, you took all those notes, and you created a book.

HN: That's my, that's what I'm saying, that's my second struggle. I'm not a writer. If I was a writer, it's no big deal, so what?

TI: In fact, keep sitting there. I'm going to grab the book so you can just show it to the camera. So stay there, see if I can do this. So why don't you go ahead and hold the book up so that the camera can just see. Just hold it up a little higher. Yeah, so this was the result of your second decision, to write this book.

HN: It was not to write it. It just happened unexpectedly. Because I didn't, my value of my culture, heritage, was greater than my anguish or hatred for English and writing.

TI: Good.

HN: That was my second struggle, and I'm glad I did.

TI: And what was the reaction?

HN: Very, very difficult for me to do that.

TI: And then after you finished it and published it, what was the reaction of people? Or how did you feel after you finished this?

HN: I was so happy. To say the least, I was so happy. I'm glad I did it. So like I said earlier, those two, testimony, testifying to the hearing, that was my first struggle, first of the two most important decisions of my life. And the second one was my being caught between the rock and hard place. That's all there was about writing the book. If I was a halfway decent writer, it was no problem, no story to talk about. But this was very, very difficult decision and an important decision. And no regrets.

TI: Very good.

HN: That's it.

TI: So I've finished all my questions. Is there anything else that you want to say to end this interview with?

HN: That's the only two things I wanted to do, is talk about my struggle, and my two most important decisions. So that's what's important. The rest of it is not important.

TI: [Laughs] Well, I disagree. I think all of that was important. And so, Hiro, thank you so much for taking the time to be interviewed. I'm glad we did this. It took a while to get here, but I'm so glad we did. So thank you so much.

HN: But in conclusion, I want to thank you for this chance to talk to you about it. I'd like you to know of my pride and my... my pride and joy of expressing my appreciation for my heritage, legacy, perpetuate it, promote it. I think that's very, very important. Thank you for your time and interest.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.