<Begin Segment 13>

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

MN: You know, back in the 1970s when you started, Japanese Americans weren't even talking about camps to their children. How did you break into the Japanese American community? Was it through Dr. Yada?

AH: No. I didn't really need too much in the way of a go-between. I mean, some of it was through the association of those people I had in the lecture series. Sue opened up doors for me. But a lot of it had to do with just, I think, how much I was wanting to know about the subject, and how much I was investing in the way of time and energy and interest in it, and that was communicated, I think, to the people I dealt with. Because then what the Nisei I interviewed used to say is, "You Sansei are always telling us Nisei that we've never told you anything about our wartime experiences. We don't recall you asking too much." And in a sense, they had a perceptual readiness to talk about it, too, if somebody would only ask. And that's what an oral historian like me was doing: asking questions. If you ask good questions, you get some good responses. And then once I had students involved, they got infected with that same kind of feeling. But it was just the center of my universe. I'm sure it had a lot to do, actually, with my first marriage ending. I just think I was so possessed with this subject that I didn't have as much room as I should have had for my emotional life.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.