<Begin Segment 25>

MN: Was it easy to galvanize the community?

FH: They did, they did. And you know, one way to galvanize the community is the crisis feeling. Whenever there's a crisis, you stick together, is that right? And so I don't know whether that was the intention or not, but it worked real well.

TI: So talk about that a little bit. When you say... you're right, when there's a crisis, people will, they react when things happen. So when you guys were thinking, trying to get the community involved, how did you make it into a crisis? What did you say to the community so that they would, they would do things?

FH: Well, if the north side of East First Street is taken away, there is no Little Tokyo. Bring it to the extreme. Because there would be no center. East Second Street was not considered as the main street through. Like, as you said, already the City Hall has taken away that portion over there. And so if it's all the way down to the Alameda Street, it was taken away, no more Little Tokyo. And so people said we had to do something, we had to stick together and fight this.

TI: So the fight was, the crisis was, "If we don't do something, Little Tokyo would disappear. It would cease to exist."

FH: Right. But thinking of what Little Tokyo is today, in those days, it was like that, it was purely Japanese. Of course, there was a Chinese restaurant and so forth, but it was mostly, purely Japanese. Like in any churches and so forth, the churches used to be the Japanese, but nowadays, there are the Chinese, there are the Koreans, there are Caucasians and so forth. Like each individual church in West L.A. or wherever it is and so forth. Same thing's happening in Little Tokyo nowadays, too. It's more of the Asian town. Just like what happened in Brazil, San Paolo, it used to be the Japanese town, and it turned into the Asian town and so forth. Same things that happened in Little Tokyo. Is that right? Don't you get that feeling?

TI: And so how do you feel about that?

FH: Well, I think whether you like it or not, that is the general tendency. And so if it's like that, let it be so, yes.

TI: So let me ask two questions here. First, going back to saving Little Tokyo, how well do you think the group did? Did you get everything that you wanted, or were there some things that didn't happen?

FH: I think it worked very well. Very well, yes.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.