<Begin Segment 19>

MA: So I'm just curious about your father and returning. It seems like the bakery wasn't doing well and he sold his shares to his brothers. What was his, what was his feelings about the wartime experiences and being in camp? Did he talk about how he felt about the government? Did he talk about camp in general to the family? How did he feel about that and how did he express it to the family?

GH: Well, I think through the years, through the years he was very bitter early on. And I think he kind of mellowed as time went on and found out that a lot of the experience he had, nobody else had. It's something that is very good when you look at it in a good sense, that, what it's done for his life. Like you say, it's an experience. He says, well, "What I went through," but he was bitter. He was very bitter because it was unfair and he lost so much. And people talk about -- and the reason he felt more bitter was because Hawaii boomed after the war, and he was reverse. Instead of making, he lost so much. And because the government did that to them, and he felt it was so unfair because they established themselves, they were so successful, and the government destroyed their business. So that, he couldn't, he couldn't forget for a long, long time. But later on, as he got older and talked about it and he would just give it up and just say, "Well, that was life. I did things that I would never have done, and I learned things. Everything is an experience." So I think eventually he accepted, accepted a lot of it because he moved around. He went back to Chicago because he was used to the mainland life. And so to think that he -- like his brothers never left the island. And so that's the difference, he could see the difference. And so his life was more interesting, I think, all of us. We're not saying thanks to the government for that, but we're still saying, if you look at the good side of it, is that what we learned from it, what we learned from it is that there are a lot, they're not all bad.

And camp life was boring, too. I still remember summertime was so boring, boring. "What are we gonna do?" I would walk over to my girlfriend's place, "What are we gonna do today?" In the summertime, nothing to do. Nothing, nothing to do, just walk around, and it's so hot in the summer. There used to be baseball games. You know, it was so hot in Heart Mountain, you go to a baseball game, one side of your shirt gets faded where the sun is beating, because Heart Mountain was really hot in the summer. And in those days, we don't wear sunscreen. It's a wonder we didn't have a lot of cancer cases, huh, skin cancer. Because it was so hot. Altitude, we had the Rockies in the background, which was real pretty. I'll always remember that, snowcapped mountains year-round surrounding us. That was pretty. And then, and Heart Mountain was the shape of that heart, kind of a slanted heart that they always used that. My dad did a painting of that, too. He used to do oil painting.

MA: It seems like your father was a very interesting man. Had a lot of diverse interests.

GH: Yeah. He was kind of a genius in that sense, where he was a combination artist and a businessman. You don't find that combination too often, but his grandfather, I mean, his father, in the old days, to them, business. You have to go into business, you're going to make money. And when my father was growing up, the teacher discovered his talent and used him for his talent. And he was pretty bratty when he was a kid, and he would, they would have contests and draw murals in school and to try and, they have contests to, with other classes, and he would tell 'em, "Okay, if I'm gonna do this, you do this for me," and all that, you know. He used to play with her and tease her and do all those kind of things with her. And so she liked him and she saw his talent. And then as he grew up, he met this man who wanted to take him away and take him overseas to study art because he saw how talented he was. My grandfather wouldn't hear of it. "Oh, no, you're never going to be an artist. Struggling artist? Never," he wouldn't.

And then "Naniwa-bushi," he was talented in that. And so he used to go -- they used to have troupes coming from Japan. And this story, I think my sister told me this story that he told her. He would go and listen, and oh, he used to love the "Naniwa-bushi." And so he would go up, up in the mountains somewhere where there's nobody, he can just belt it out. And he would, from what he learned, he would start singing. And as strong a voice as he can, he used to sing and he'd practice and practice and practice. He used to go to all the performances. And then one day, that troupe that came, the lead singer got sick and couldn't sing. So he said he came to audience and he said, "Is there anybody who can sing 'Naniwa-bushi?" And my father was a young teenager, and he said, "I can sing." He said, "You? How can you sing?" He said, "I can," and so he sang. And that he was amazed, that man was amazed. He wanted to take him back with them to Japan. [Laughs] And my grandfather said, "No, no." And he said, "No, you're never gonna be an artist or singer." He said, "You'll just be poor all your life." See, that's all he could think of, is a businessman. And so they ended up going into business. So my father always said, "I could have been a famous artist or I could have been a famous 'Naniwa-bushi' singer." I said, "Yeah, but look at you. You became a successful businessman." But see, he was able to do that.

MA: Yeah, it seems like he was a very successful entrepreneur.

GH: He could, yeah, he could do that. Where most times you're either an artist... you know, you're either left brain or right brain, huh? And he was a combination of it. And his brothers weren't, none of them were artistic, none of them sang. And so I don't know why he got all the talent. And so anyway, he was, he was pretty interesting. So everywhere he went, he started entertaining. And my mother was in, eventually in Gardena, my mother was in a nursing home, he used to go and sing "Naniwa-bushi" for those patients in there. Eventually he became one, too. But at that time, oh, they would just sit there and they couldn't wait to listen to him because you don't hear "Naniwa-bushi" anymore. And so at least he used to volunteer and do that. But old folks always appreciated it. So he used to go around singing in camp. He used to go and sing, and they go around in different blocks, mess halls, and they go and entertain. He used to do that. [Laughs] My sister plays the shamisen, too. She was too young, I think, then, to perform. But she was a good, she's a shamisen master now. She's one of the very few for her age. In fact, it's kind of a dying art, so she was trying to teach a group and they were learning. And my nephew, I have a nephew who died of cancer, and he's a musician, very, very talented. He was a jazz artist, and so she taught him. So he started playing shamisen and she thought he could take over what she had taught him and he could be a master, but he died.

MA: Was that something she learned in Hawaii?

GH: She started out here when she was little. And after we went back, she went back again to learn some more. She learned dance and shamisen. And then when she went to Chicago, she studied some more and went to Seattle get her master's. She went to Seattle, and I guess there was an instructor there. So that's how she... so she kept it up, and she used to teach.

MA: Did you take music lessons when you were a child?

GH: Not me, I'm the only one. They all did except me. [Laughs] They had their piano lessons and Japanese dance and they did all that. I didn't. I didn't do any of that.

MA: When you were in high school back in Hawaii, what were some of your interests? What did you think about the future and what did you want to do?

GH: I really didn't have much. I didn't have much thoughts about that. I don't know. It's... maybe I was just a late bloomer or something but I just never thought about those things, you know? So sad to say. [Laughs]

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.