<Begin Segment 16>

MA: I want to ask you about your father's art and what you, I guess, learned about his journey through his artwork. Because I imagine he documented a lot of what was happening around him during those years.

JH: The whole thing. He began at Kilauea Military Camp. And there's a... that particular picture he watercolored. So I remember Gary Okihiro asking me, "Where is that picture?" 'cause he wanted to put it on his, as a book cover. But he put cane fields or something on that one. And so he started with that, and then he would draw little portraits, all pen, and then some of 'em he would, it would be very detailed. Some were sketches. And then I know at the end of the books, he did portraits of all the Hawaii people, and then he drew a portrait of I think a corporal and the commander of the camp. And everyone autographed their pictures. So there is, there was a paper article, there was an article in Hawaii saying, "Do you know these men?" And they had all the portraits my father had put on. "Do you know what happened to them?" is what it is. So that article is in that book if you want to see it.

MA: But there was probably no photography or any other way to document the camp, right, other than these paintings?

JH: No, there wasn't. But how he did it was they took a picture of all the mothers and children in individual family units. Now, who took the pictures, I don't know, but it was done in Jerome. No idea who did it. No, you weren't allowed cameras, but I think like Toyo Miyatake, he put parts of it and brought in. And then I found out from one of my fellow internees who was also my classmate, that her father had taken reels and reels of movies. And they weren't stored right, but when she found them, she donated them to the Japanese American National Museum. And she said they could only save a little bit of it. So I'm not sure which film they used it in.

MA: But your father, being in Lordsburg and Santa Fe, his paintings were really some of the only documentation?

JH: Of Lordsburg, yeah.

MA: Yeah, of Lordsburg.

JH: That's why, as I told you about the Lordsburg museum, it's in, I think it could have been the camp auditorium. And like I told you, I never got to see the pictures in there. I'd like to return, but I'm not really sure where it is. But he does have it, I went through the pictures last night, and he has interior of the barracks, he has what it looks like, 'cause they were outside of town. And there are other pictures like Mr. Odachi lying in his bed and Mr. Odachi being sick. So he documents it according to where he was. Otherwise, I'd never have known where he would have been. And also Joe Ando, who lived in Santa Fe, wanted to have this plaque put up above Santa Fe, because Santa Fe now has all those tract homes. So he managed to get it because he had the support of the mayor, I think. But it took him a long time to get it, and he was very, very upset with me for not being there when they dedicated it. I couldn't go; I was promised to JANM, so my surrogate big sister, Masako, Ebisuzaki, she went.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.