<Begin Segment 34>

TI: So, Hank, I'm thinking about this interview, so last three hours we've been talking, your life is pretty amazing. It's really gone through so many twists and turns. I mean, to the point where, you know, growing up at Terminal Island, Los Angeles, and then incarcerated for four solid years, renouncing your citizenship, going to Japan, living through that, and then having a career, a career military, U.S. military.

HN: Oh yeah, military. And then U.S. civil service.

TI: Yeah, and I'm thinking... and now you're living in Hawaii, and I'm curious about how Japanese Americans in Hawaii think about your story. On the mainland, Japanese Americans are a little more familiar about what happened in terms of the camps, perhaps the draft resisters, the renunciants. I'm curious the difference in reaction you get in Hawaii versus maybe the West Coast, like in California. Are there differences in how Japanese Americans view your story?

HN: Yeah. Yeah, there's quite a bit of difference. Kinzo Wakayama, you've heard of him, he passed away a few years back, and his son was a colonel in the Pentagon when the 9/11 happened. He became a hero there, saving people. He wanted to honor his dad who was a veteran of the World War I, to be buried here in Punch Bowl, so he had a little memorial service. I was invited to that, and it was, it was a Nisei Nikkei guy who was active and advocate of the Nisei accomplishment during the second World War, 442nd and so forth. And I met him at that, and I was talking. "I'm a renunciant, and I confronted the government during the war and I rejected going to the service because all that happened," and this guy says, "Good for you." That type of reaction.

TI: So more accepting.

HN: Oh, yeah, he said, "Good for you. You did it." And also was a lady that, I don't know whether you know her, Tanabe?

TI: Irene?

HN: Irene, something like. Anyway, she's an activist, too. She's got into this, Japanese zero fighter landing at the island off Kauai and the Pacific Aviation Museum portrayed that Nisei Nikkei guy helping the guy as a traitor, and it wasn't that. He was just trying to save human being from being burned and so forth. That's what she was fighting. She finally won the case. She took it to the state senate and stopped funding that museum because they were propagating the false information.

TI: Yeah, I think her name might be Barbara. I think Irene's her sister, so I think Barbara's her --

HN: Anyway, I told her about it. She says, "You know, Hank," she said, "you were sixty-five years ahead of your time." [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, because... it sounds more accepting. Like, you mentioned the Wakayama story, because even though he was a World War I veteran, later on he... I think he, I'm not sure if he ever got his U.S. citizenship through World War I, but he went back to Japan and never came back to the United States.

HN: Yeah, right. Right. Never came back, yeah.

TI: And was very bitter about what happened. Well, so how does that compare with California? When you say it's very different, what would the reaction be in California?

HN: Well, I never, never... the people I've been associated in California was within the circle of repats. I never went outside, like meeting JACL, because I probably gonna lose my control. The whole thing is this: when that happened, when the "loyalty question" came and people went and volunteered, went to -- we respected their decision, you know. Each individual had personal reason, their way of perspective, so why can't they say the same thing to us? They didn't do it. No respect. Just calling us disloyal. Well, that's, that's the reason why I try to stay away from JACL group. Even, even now, even at this day and age -- I don't read JACL, but some of the information I get -- they still got that "two hundred percent American" and all that. That's ridiculous. Live your own -- they can't even live their own life. Pretending like they're so good.

TI: Is there anything that organizations like the JACL can do that can make amends for...

HN: No... I feel, I feel that they should not propagate the American, especially the new generation, into their mentality of being two hundred percent American. That's the only thing I hope for, to teach the younger generation be a good citizen, but you don't have to bend your back and break your back to appease these guys, you know. If there has to be a conversation, if it's justified, so be it. That's the only way you can live. That's the way I look at it. You can't be appeasing to people all the time.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.