<Begin Segment 21>

TI: But when he was on the mainland, what was your sense from the correspondence that you did get from him?

HH: We, I was practically the only one writing to him 'cause I think initially they couldn't write Japanese. At some point they were able to, so... boys don't write, so I was the only one writing to him. So I wrote to him wherever he was, then when he would write back it would be just one sheet of paper folded three ways -- you know, that one sheet, your mail kind -- and there would be holes all over the place, censored. It looked like it was razor cut, very clean cut, but full of holes so you couldn't even make out what he was trying to say.

TI: Do you recall the type of things that you wrote to him?

HH: Oh, yes. I wrote to him and told him that the neighbor had a shortwave radio, so we could find out some things. No sooner that letter went out, the FBI went to the neighbor and confiscated the radio. [Laughs]

TI: Oh, so when you wrote that letter...

HH: They read it.

TI: They read it.

HH: Yeah, censored. So everything was being censored, so after that I hardly wrote.

TI: Did you feel a little guilty about that?

HH: I was shocked. But, and I was happy that nothing else happened, only the radio was taken away.

TI: Did you ever tell the neighbor that...

HH: No, no, no. [Laughs]

TI: Well, now it's on the record, so they may find out. [Laughs] Wow, so that just shows you that the government was reading everything --

HH: Everything.

TI: -- that was going --

HH: And it was, I don't know what they were cutting out, but they sure cut out a lot, so you couldn't even make out what he's trying to say. I think names, places, all were cut out.

TI: Okay. Even though it was censored, did you get a sense of how he was doing?

HH: No, you couldn't tell. This gave, that book gave a lot.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.