<Begin Segment 20>

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

JG: Looking back on your career, one of the reasons I asked the question about how many interviews you had done was because, given the number of interviews you've done over the years, I'm wondering, for good or for bad, which ones have stuck with you over the years? For example, you and I have both interviewed --

AH: Togo Tanaka.

JG: Well, we've both interviewed Togo, we've both done Harry Ueno, and we've also both done Lillian Baker, which certainly has its own interesting "reward." But I'm just curious, of the different interviews you've done over the years, which ones have stuck with you and why?

AH: Some stick with you because people ask you about them. I mean, it becomes a sticking point because somebody will ask about Lillian Baker or about Harry Ueno because they're controversial interviewees. But for me, one of the reasons that I don't do as many interviews right now as before, aside from the reasons that I've already given to you, is that I don't think I do as well in the interviews any longer because the people aren't as important to me as they were when I first was doing interviewing. I mean, every person was important to me back then. It really was a rich kind of democracy, where it didn't matter who the person was I interviewed. What I was doing was accessing their life with their blessing, to explore the recesses of their personality that they themselves had never explored because they didn't want to go there. They told themselves, "Don't go there," and they hid some things. But insofar as "important interviews," I suppose the interviews that I've enjoyed the most doing, those that have meant the most to me, are the ones that brought together all aspects of my interests and my life, and they're the ones I've done with social scientists who had been involved during World War II with the Japanese Evacuation and Resettlement Study, JERS, and/or the War Relocation Authority's Community Analysis Section. When I was working on those interviews, I wanted to write something that was very important -- unfortunately, it's never been written by me -- something like what the professor at UCLA did in writing about . . . what's the name of his book? You know, Jim, the Canadian Chinese scholar who used to be at UCLA?

JG: The historian?

AH: Yeah, from the History Department there. He was at UCLA, but he's since gone to the University of British Columbia.

JG: Henry Yu.

AH: Henry Yu. What was the title of his first book?

JG: Thinking Orientals.

AH: Thinking Orientals. That book is about pan-Asian social scientists, particularly sociologists, not just Japanese American ones, but I wanted to work on a book about the Nisei and hakujin social scientists who were affiliated with Professor Dorothy Swaine Thomas in JERS. I wanted to use that project as an expressive moment within the development of American social science. That's what I wanted to do. So those interviews with the JERS social scientists were super important for me. They connected with all of the things that I did in intellectual history; all of my interest in sociology, anthropology, history, and everything all came to bear on them. So whether done with hakujin social scientists like Bob Spencer and Rosalie Hankey Wax, or Japanese Americans like Charlie Kikuchi, James Sakoda, Togo Tanaka, and Setsuko Matsunaga Nishi, those interviews really engaged me. All of those interviews, except in the case of Rosalie Hankey Wax, because of her health condition and other things, were multi-day interviews. Those were really important interviews to me just because in doing them I didn't have to leave intellectual history. I was still doing intellectual history, but I was also doing Japanese American history at the same time. Those were the interviews that were most important to me.

As far as the personal relationships with the people I interviewed, I had such a close relationship with Harry Ueno. When my wife Debbie was teaching classes at San Jose State, I would go up to San Jose with her, and while she would be teaching, I'd go see Harry or some of the draft resisters, usually Mits Koshiyama. I would go and pick up Mits at his house in San Jose and then Mits and I would go over and pick up Harry and we would go out to a restaurant somewhere. And I watched the whole arc of Harry's life, to the point where he lost his car once and was losing his memory. But mostly I saw him when he was razor sharp, when he could remember everything. But when I'd come up to see him at his mobile home in Sunnyvale, even when he was in a bad state, he would make two meals for me. This is the guy who was a cook at Manzanar in Block 22. He would make two meals for me: one a Japanese meal, and the other a so-called "American meal." And then I told him, "Geez, I'm fat enough, I don't need two meals." But anyway, Harry was a super important person to me.

Another interesting interviewing experience was with Clarence Nishizu, a Nisei in Orange County. Clarence and I had such a long experience together; we worked on getting the money together to get this museum built on the Cal State Fullerton campus, the Orange County Agricultural and Nikkei Heritage Museum. Clarence was an important person for me because he was in my life for a long time. He had dimensions to his personality that were a little different from the way in which he tried to represent himself. I mean, there were some things that were fetching about him that I really liked, some courageous things and some offbeat things. And I remember you, Martha, telling me that one time at a community event that you went to, you noticed Clarence sitting all by himself, and so you went over and talked to him for a long, long time. Now if somebody had just looked at this scene, they might wonder, "What does Martha Nakagawa, a journalist who writes stories about draft resisters, have in common with an Old Guard JACLer like Clarence Nishizu?" This situation reminded me of the time Clarence Nishizu called me on the phone and said, "You know, I want to go back to New York and meet Michi Weglyn." I thought to myself, "What do you have in common with Michi Weglyn?" And, you know, I think he was a bit interested in her romantically. His wife Helen had died and Michi had this lovely photo of herself on the dust jacket of her book, Years of Infamy, and he had heard that she was living alone in New York. Then Michi Weglyn calls me up and she says, "This guy Clarence Nishizu wants to come back here and talk to me. What do I have to talk to Clarence Nishizu about?" So I'm a go-between between Clarence and Michi. And then Michi said, "When Clarence called me up, he said, "I want to stay back there in New York, so get me a place." Then she said, "What am I supposed to do? If I get him a place that's expensive, he'll complain about that. If I don't get him an expensive place, he'll think that somehow or other I don't think he has enough money to afford a good place." Well, Clarence went back to New York and he and Michi got along famously. And what the basis was upon which they got along was that he was really into faith healing. He told Michi how he had taken his late wife Helen to the Philippines to have her cancer treated by a faith healer, and that he had also recommended a lot of his friends to do the same thing. And then Michi, who was then afflicted with cancer, got interested in the same treatment. She later went to the Philippines and was cared for by a faith healer. She even sent me a videotape of her going through the faith healing process. So she and Clarence did have a basis for being able to have some kind of a relationship. Isn't that weird? I mean, two people that would seem to be so far apart -- one's a political right-winger, the other's a political left-winger. They were so different.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.