<Begin Segment 32>

SY: And what, and you were able to support your brother all these years, then? I mean through school, and you made it through, he made it?

HS: Yeah, once he graduated. And then he worked for another optometrist, but when he got a draft notice he went for a draft thing, but he flunked the, an optometrist, he flunked the eye test. [Laughs] He didn't have his glasses on. But the doctor, the optometrist, the doctor didn't know how to examine him, so he says, "You walk down the hall, go get a drink." So the long hallway, and the doctor kept his glasses, so he looked both ways and couldn't see the drinking fountain, so he walked this way [points] and the drinking fountain was this way [points opposite direction]. So the doctor says, "You flunked the eye test."

SY: So he never had to go into the army. That's, that was...

HS: No. So he quit his job, so then I had three thousand dollars, so I says, "Well, I've got this much money." I says, "Why don't you open your own office?" So he said, "Oh, okay." And so then he rented an office in Culver City, and from then on he took off. He became one of the fifty most recognized optometrists from his, graduated from the L.A. School of Optometry. He was honored as one of the fifty at a fiftieth anniversary of the L.A. School of Optometry. I was proud of that.

SY: You have a lot to be proud of, have a very rich life. I mean, as you look back, do you --

HS: Rich in memories, but not in money. [Laughs]

SY: Well, that's...

HS: But my dad always said, he says, "It's better to have a lot of friends than people that just have money for their goal." I never forgot that. But he says, "The friends in life will always help you through in hard times." But he says, "A guy that's just interested in money is too interested in making money and not friends."

SY: So do you feel like you've been rewarded in your later life for all these things? Like for instance, the award you won for, from, the Nisei Pioneer Award, is that, was that a...

HS: [Laughs] You don't go do things for awards. It's just, they come. Because you never think of it, I never thought I'd get Nisei Week. But my cousin, Clarence Arima, was working for Union Paper Supply right on Second in Los Angeles, it was his idea to start Nisei Week. And he was, for some reason, he got all the merchants in Little Tokyo and said, "Let's start a festival." And at the last Nisei Week, what was it, I think when I was honored there was eighteen hundred people participating in the parade and everything, and it was the biggest parade that they had, as far as I know.

SY: And that was your cousin. So did you know that he was doing this when he started it way back when?

HS: Well, I knew that, 'cause he was interviewed in... I think, but I always knew that he was, he knew all the people down in Little Tokyo. But I always knew that he was the one that started Nisei Week. That was 1934.

SY: Wow.

HS: And look how it's grown. But it was his idea to get all the merchants. He said, "This way it'll be good for Little Tokyo business." And that was his main idea.

SY: That's amazing. Yeah, 1934. So, and this was a cousin that you knew all through the camp years and growing up, and after?

HS: Well, I've known him ever since I was a kid because --

SY: He's one of the ones that married into your family?

HS: He was much older. He was much older than us, and so every year he'd come and, on our, he'd bring us Christmas presents every year for all of us kids. That's what I remember the most.

SY: And he was one of the families that married into your family, your...

HS: Well, his mother and my father were first cousins.

SY: I see. Okay. Wow.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.