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[Ed. note: This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator]

JG: So Art, before we took a quick break, we were talking about your social, cultural, political, and intellectual development, and you were telling us about the role your parents had in imparting certain values to you. I was wondering if you could talk more about that.

AH: Well, I think I've exhausted that part of it. What I think I would like to talk about now is something that has not been talked about very much by historians until recent years, and that is the whole idea of the body and the way that the body affects one's ideas, values, and behavior. And I think people need to come to grips with that situation.

I was born with some physical defects that I think have had an impact on the way I feel towards, you know, people who are afflicted in one or another way with special problems or challenges like race or religion or whatever. One foot of mine is two and a half shoe sizes bigger than the other one. My right foot is shorter than my left foot. Also, I don't have separate toes, except for my large toe, on my right foot. I have a right foot with my four small toes fused. There aren't enough bones to break the fused toes into four normal toes. There's no webbing there, just a fusion. And as you both know, when you're a kid, you can easily be ridiculed by other kids if there's anything out of the way with you. You know, if somebody's too thin or too fat or too whatever. I didn't feel different most of the time because most of the time I had shoes on. But when I would go to the public swimming pool, of course, even though people weren't pointing or something, I'm hearing them say some hurtful things. So I think it's made me quite sensitive to and empathetic to the "deformity" or "abnormality" or "differences" of other people.

And then, you know, when I was in the sixth grade, my teacher started noticing that when I was running out to recess, that I was limping quite a bit, so she got in touch with my mother and she said, "You know, I noticed that Artie, when he runs, is limping more and more." So then they found that my left leg had grown away from my right leg so that it was three inches longer. So the thought was that at some point down the line, I was going to have to get a shoe lift. I've always felt a special kinship with a friend of mine at the Japanese American National Museum, the documentary filmmaker John Esaki, because he told me that his father did have a shoe lift. He was considerably older than me, so he wasn't the beneficiary of what I was lucky to be the beneficiary of and that is going to this woman doctor in Goleta who said, "You need to go to see Dr. Walter Graham, an orthopedic surgeon in Santa Barbara. He's developed some new way of being able to correct this situation. So I was just starting my growing spurt, and so Dr. Graham put staples in my left leg so that its growth was retarded for three years, so that my right leg could catch up with my left leg. And it almost did. There's still a difference, and I still limp and people say, especially when I am tired and limp more: "You know, I noticed you're limping. Did you hurt your leg or something?" Of course I played sports, and so that condition didn't stop me from strenuous activities, but I have had multiple operations on my left knee, and some of them were operations I had before they had arthroscopic surgery, so I have gigantic scars on my left leg.

I suppose another thing that sensitized me to others regarded as "different" was being a bit overweight. My mom was overweight, my brother was overweight. I always think of those kinds of things to be both a disadvantage and an advantage. The disadvantage is in the way that ideals are defined, but in another sense, it's what can be called the "saving remnant." I remember reading a novel when I was in high school that was really important to me, about a club-footed person: Of Human Bondage by Somerset Maugham. That novel was important because I realized that these so-called "defects" are the things that make you idiosyncratically different so that you're not living life on automatic pilot, but that you have to reflect on things and consider other people's situation. And so I think that's been an important thing for me, too, that I was blessed in that way with this alleged liability. It is something that has paid dividends in providing me with certain insights and certain compassions. So I think that situation is something that I wanted to make part of the record, too.

JG: Oh, well, thank you for sharing that. That's very important. Was there anything specific that occurred around your childhood struggles with your body? I mean, you mentioned kids noticing, but did anyone ever, you know, was there any --

AH: No, I didn't have any outrageous situation. I just sensed its possibility and then I just didn't go to the beach as I got older. Even now, to these days, I mean, I dread certain situations. What if I am wearing sandals and I go to a Japanese American house and they say. "Please take off your shoes." I don't want to be walking around in public with that foot, I really don't. So that's always on my mind when I go to the airport. I'll forget I have moccasins or footwear without socks and then all of a sudden I'm requested to take my shoes off for a security check. I mean, it's always there to be revealed. And people are polite enough about it, it's just my own feeling about it. I mean, why did Japanese Americans after camp feel self-hatred? They often say they wanted to be somebody else, or they didn't want to be Japanese Americans. I mean, nowadays nobody's going to say that. Now Japanese Americans have got a higher standard of living, higher education rate, live in good houses, have good jobs, and so on, so they're not going to say that. But at that particular point in time and everything, they did, and for me, I wanted to be "normal," especially when I was a kid. However, when you're poor, it's hard to hide abnormalities. For example, I played a lot of baseball, and I really needed split-sized shoes. But we couldn't afford to be buying me two pairs of shoes. So I had the shoe that was too large stuffed with cotton. But then with spikes on the bottom of the shoes, what do you think the large shoe does? It curls. It's easy for me to be called "Twinkle Toes" because my toes are pointing up. And people are wondering why the hell I am wearing that large shoe. I didn't go into an explanation of it. And it's that kind of thing. So it's not so much an actual problem, it's just that you're always jockeying to position yourself towards normality, or at least to give the appearance of normality. And so I don't go through these tortured explanations like I'm doing for you guys on this interview, but I mean, that's essentially what is going on in my mind. So I say, well, I'm lucky, but you don't know that when you are a kid; instead, you think you're terribly handicapped.

JG: That's interesting. Interesting.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.