<Begin Segment 4>

AH: You mentioned church, and I know that the Rocky Nippon, when it was started, was grounded in Buddhism.

SH: Yes.

AH: And so was there a Buddhist temple, church, near where you were growing up?

SH: Yes. The Buddhist church was right in back of, we ran out of our kitchen door, and there was an alley. And then went around the nash pit, and the next place there was the Buddhist church kitchen where you could go in. And then from the kitchen we always ran in to school, and then they had the regular place where they had the services, and that's where they had the school. So it was very, just two minutes away to the church.

AH: And what other churches were in the community?

SH: There was a Methodist church about half a mile away.

AH: Japanese Methodist?

SH: Japanese Methodist church. And even in, as we were growing up, it was kind of divided between Buddhists and Christians. And so the people who went to the Christian church, like there was a person next door, one of my good friends, she went to the Christian church, but she didn't go to Japanese school.

AH: Oftentimes it's said that some of the disagreements between the Buddhists and the Christians in the Japanese American community has been muffled, and the people don't talk about it very much, but it was real. Was it real in Denver?

SH: Yes, I think there was a complete difference or a break between the two, because when my father was starting the paper, I noticed that they were all the Buddhist people who came to the house. And they were the people not only from Denver, but the outlying areas like Arvada and Fort Lupton and all the close areas. And it seemed that, in the little things I've heard at home, at the dinner table, that the Christians had the Colorado Times and they wouldn't publish the news of the Japanese gatherings or what was going on. And so then the reverend would often come over, and he said to us that, I think that was why the discussion started about the importance of having a newspaper that would represent their viewpoint. And so then I don't know when it started except that I was still very young. I kind of always gauge by whether my little sisters were born or not. And it was during that time that the newspaper started to, I think, gather an interest. And the reverend was over at our house a lot, and then the two would be talking, and pretty soon I saw them working together to write things up and all.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.