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MA: And did the children or the other students know about what had happened with you being sent to camp?

JH: No, they didn't.

MA: Did kids talk about that at all?

JH: They didn't.

MA: So really there was not a lot of awareness about...

JH: No. My father kept it alive, though. When I moved up here, I met some of the internees from the different camps. All of them would not talk about it. All of them felt hazukashi, very ashamed. So most all the kotonks that I used to speak to about camp, I'm the one that's saying, "Hey, I went to camp, too, you know." And, "No, nobody from Hilo," or, "nobody from Hawaii went." I said, "I beg to differ." And even when I went to college, much later in my years, I went to Harbor College and I took history there, 'cause that was one of the requirements. Never said a word throughout the whole thing, just listening and taking notes. And one day, we came, the book was open and there was just one line, one sentence: "All the Japanese were put away in camps on the West Coast." Okay, that would have been fine, but the teacher decided to qualify that. "But nobody from Hawaii was ever put into a camp." [Raises hand] First time I spoke in class, and I told him, "I beg to differ." And he said, "Why?" "Because people from Hawaii were put into camp." And he says, "Show me the proof." I said, "Right here." And I said, "Will you please teach people that people from Hawaii, about two thousand of them, were sent out. So he was one of the first ones that knew that people from Hawaii, I think, were sent out. And when the museum opened, of course, they started to try to get all the stories.

MA: But I think, still, there's not a widespread awareness of what happened in Hawaii.

JH: No. The reason for those conventions is because I think Arkansas was the first state that mandated the teaching of the internment camps. Even here, until the 442, I think, opened their exhibits and things, you know, the monument, up until that time, I don't think much was taught about the internment. People who were in internment camps would be asked to go to schools while they're learning if their kids knew about their parents or grandparents being in internment camp. I remember my son, while I was working, I had to take time off, my son said, "Can you come and tell my classmates in AP History about being in camp?" So he says, "And I'm gonna get a lot of points with this." [Laughs] So I went to Banning High School, and I spoke to them and told them my experience. So little by little, it was being brought out. I give my father a lot of credit for making me open. Because many of our friends who had been in camp never spoke about it even in Hilo. Never wanted to quite remember it.

In the Odachi family, I have a classmate. She's, that whole family is close to us. My father literally adopted them. So her name is like my name, she has the same name, June Mitsuko. So I was asking her, "Do you remember camp?" 'Cause she's a year older than I, but we were in the same grade. She says, "No, I don't remember anything." And so I made a tape for her, and I sent it to her so that she would try to get the memories out, you know, from her subconscious. But she has absolutely no memory.

MA: And did your father speak to you about camp or speak to the family?

JH: Uh-huh.

MA: Is that how he kept it alive?

JH: Yeah. Besides that, he had his paintings, his pictures. And when he used to speak to the Sunday school kids, I remember we were back in Hilo maybe, just about a month or so. And he was again active there. So I remember it was his time to give the sermon for the kids. And he started it something like this: "Once upon a time there was a man, and these people came and picked him up and took him to a place where there was barbed wire and camps, barracks, and made sure that he was safe." He turned it around. He said, "Then none of those bad people would come and kill us or harm us." So because of that, I was never bitter. But it took a long time psychologically to fit into, back into Hawaii's culture.

MA: I think especially because you spent so much of your childhood on the mainland.

JH: Yeah, those three years --

MA: Three years are important.

JH: -- really made a difference. Because my husband, who is also from Hilo, they would talk among themselves. And their words that they used, that I had no idea what they are, what does it mean? When we get together, though, you know we're from Hawaii because we just go right into pidgin. But there are words that, to this day, I have to keep asking, "What do they mean?" So those three years really made a big difference.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.