<Begin Segment 28>

TI: Okay, so, so from the proceeds from the farm, so you had enough to keep going, 'til you started. So I'm going to jump a little bit, because you had an interesting encounter. So during the '70s and '80s there was a movement within the Japanese American community to seek an apology or redress from the government, and there was a woman in particular, her name was Lillian Baker, who opposed this movement and you knew this woman. I want to understand how the two of you got to know each other.

HU: Oh, through, through business connections, and then she was very misunderstood. She studied under this Japanese artist, so she knew more about Japanese culture and custom than us Niseis, really, and so she had, at one time she had quite a few Nisei friends. And at one time a couple of Nisei ladies asked her to make a presentation or speak at this group of young people, and her theme of her speech was that the Japanese did not suffer in comparison to what the others suffered because it was war time and in war time everybody suffers, like her husband was killed in the Pacific during the war and the Jews, six million Jews were sent to gas chambers and that kind of thing, so in a way I believe her speech was sort of belittling the Japanese situation. And then, so the young people, the audience started booing and that's when things start happening. So Lillian Baker is a very strong person; she's not going to stand for that, so she counterattacked and the audience counter-counterattacked and it sort of escalated, and over the time things got very, very tense and she did something that isn't too acceptable, like even on national television. She went up to the Nisei veteran speaking at the, what's the center thing, and grabbed his paper, and that kind of thing. I mean, it just isn't excusable, but she was that kind of person where she reacted very strongly to that kind of situation and she was, she was not a diplomat. She didn't have that finesse of a politician, so she was taken in a wrong way. Maybe it was rightfully taken in a wrong way, but if you, if anyone knew her like I knew her, she wasn't the type of person that she made herself portrayed to be. And so it's just tragic and as far as I'm concerned, in front of the camera, I'm not ashamed or afraid to say that Lillian Baker was my friend.

TI: So explain that, this friendship. I mean, how did it come about and what was your relationship with her?

HU: She used to come to my shop and I used to do work for her, and then we would talk and express our feelings towards things and things like that. She was, she was very sensitive about making... I don't know, giving credit or anything to sort of bring up a certain ethnic group. For example, I remember the time they had some kind of monument in Arizona, or anyway, in the West, and the monument said something about the Indians, about the white people slaughtering the Indians or something and then she didn't like the idea, the terminology of what it said that Indians were mistreated by the whites and things like that, so she was kind of touchy about those things as well. And I guess when it came to Japanese, I guess she didn't want the white people to be known as somebody that mistreated the Japanese or something in that nature. I mean, I can't explain it, explain it too well, but sort of in that nature, in that line.

TI: But what I'm hearing from you is, is that you felt that she was misunderstood, that maybe at the beginning she, she held these views, but then with these encounters it sort of escalated and, and it was her nature to kind of then push back and back and back and that's kind of what happened.

HU: Yeah. Yeah, it just went out of control.

TI: When you, when you, and you had this opportunity to talk with her on a more personal basis, so how do you feel about her views? Where were you when you, did you ever discuss things, did you ever kind of sometimes try to discuss or... and maybe sometimes you disagreed with what she had to say? I mean, what, how did that go?

HU: Yeah, there were things that bothered me, like she was sorta close with the, these, the group that was in the Death March thing, Japan's, Japan's, what was that? Bataan?

TI: The Bataan Death March.

HU: Yeah. They, and those guys had a very strong group and they were backing Lillian up and I didn't think that that was a good idea because these guys were calling us a "Jap" just like the Japanese soldiers did that they had encountered. That kind of thing. And well, so there were things that we, that we didn't agree, but I like to respect anybody's opinion and I like to judge a person by what the person is rather than what a person says or what other people think of the person.

TI: And as a person you respected her?

HU: Yes, as a person, sure.

TI: So she was a very controversial person, and how did, I guess, your relationship with her affect how people dealt with you? So when people found out, "Hey, Hank knows Lillian and her friends," how did that...

HU: Yeah, I got some hate mail, not life threatening, but something that, sort of enough to kinda think about, kinda piss you off, but then I didn't take it that seriously. In a way it's a compliment, because now I know that somebody's listening to me and taking me seriously, and so in that respect there's, there's a plus side to that, so it didn't bother me much. But it's ironic that these people who were fighting (for) Japanese right (are) attacking me because I'm expressing my point of view, so, so it didn't bother me much, but I did have (some) kind of reaction, but mostly, aside from that I had more compliments on what I did. Like, like declining my twenty thousand redress, I had more compliments on that (from) people I knew, or people I know. They didn't take my view as anything.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.