Densho Digital Archive - Fred Y. Hoshiyama Interview (denshovh-hfred

<Begin Segment 29>

TI: Okay, so Fred, we're going to start the third, the third section. And we had just finished up, you were telling me about Springfield, where you got your master's. So why don't you tell me, after Springfield, Massachusetts, where did you go next?

FH: Well, that's a good question because I'm looking for a job now. I've got my master's, and I'm ready to go back to find some jobs. So I went, advertised myself, I'm available, every time there's a job opening I would go and get an interview. After about twelve interviews, no jobs. It's just, no one was... scared to hire me during the war years. So I understood why, and so I thought, "Oh, my gosh. I might as well go back to school instead of looking for a job and wasting my time." And first I went to New York City, worked in New York at the YMCA, McBurney branch, which is the first YMCA, 1951, it started. No, no. 1953 it started. The first gymnasium in the United States was built at McBurney branch YMCA. Then I couldn't get a job, and there was a job opening possibility there. So I lived there, got twenty-five dollars a week for being a kind of a janitor, and they'll give you job as a janitor but not as a program person. And when one day I show up for work, and some young man shows up and he says, "Is this the program office?" and I said, "Yes, who are you?" Before I asked that question, I knew who he was. He got the job that I was hoping to get, but they didn't tell me they hired somebody. Someone was supposed to tell me, but I guess they're, didn't want to hurt my feelings or whatever, they forgot to tell me. So I said to myself, "These guys aren't gonna give me a job," so I quit. I resigned, I quit, and I said, "My gosh, what'd I do that for?" I got no place to live. 'Cause I was living there, thirteen dollars a week for my room, twelve dollars to eat, which is okay. I was doing, doing well. No job, no place to live. So I panicked and I sat down and I said, "My gosh, Fred, that was a stupid thing." But I already asked for resignation.

TI: And during this time, did it, did it...

FH: This was three months.

TI: Yeah. Did this discourage you about the YMCA?

FH: Well, no, no.

TI: Because here you had interviewed, tried to get a job...

FH: I felt that the timing was such that it was... but maybe there's a chance to get a job someplace else. But in the meantime, just being there would not help me. So maybe I could go back to school and prepare myself better. So I decided one hour away by train is a place called Yale. And so I decided I would call them up, and I did. And I asked for the dean at the graduate school, and it was Dean Luther. And so I said, "Dean Luther, I just quit my job, and this is what happened. I'm a refugee from the relocation centers, actually, our concentration camps. And I would like to enroll at your school but I just don't have money, I lost my job." He says, "Come on down, we'll talk about it." So I took the next train, talked to him, he says, "We'll give you a place to stay, we'll give you a scholarship for whatever class you want to take, and give you a part-time job. You could work at the refectory." Refectory is the eating place.

TI: So what made you think... so Yale University is a top Ivy League school, it's a bastion of...

FH: Well, it was the closest one, close to the school, yeah. I could have gone to Columbia or someplace, but I read, doing my master's for Springfield, there were a lot of folks that, at that school that I researched for my paper. One was Neber, Richard Neber is considered one of the top ethics professor in the nation, Neber. Of course, I got to know Reinhold also at New York. And then there was a Liston Pope, the sociologist, Ronald Rowland Baton, New Testament, these are all people that I became familiar, and they're right there, one hour's ride from where, at Yale Divinity School, graduate school. So they said, "Come on down," and I went down and I got that place, place to live. So I got my suitcase and went over there, and I started a new life. But my main, I'm still waiting for a job at a YMCA, okay. And then when I'm at Yale Divinity School, one year, I get a wire from Honolulu from a student that was at Springfield with me named Henry Koizumi, and he worked for the Y. He said, "There's a job here. Would you like it?" I said, "I would love it." I'm going to try to go there, so I wrote to them and accepted a job over, by mail, airmail. And then I tried to get passage from San Francisco, it took me a whole month, two, three months, I was stuck there. But they started paying me from the time I arrived in San Francisco, so I've got money coming in, hundred dollars a month.