<Begin Segment 6>

AH: Okay. Now, you've kind of gotten into the next category pretty nicely, the pre-immigration lives of your father and mother, you've really sort of covered this, so why don't we talk a little bit about the changing nature of family life in your family here in Denver, not here in Denver, in the United States, in Denver. Because he's going to switch from being a tailor to all of a sudden being a newspaperman.

SH: Right.

AH: So why don't you talk a little bit about that transformation and how that changed the nature of family life for you.

SH: Right. When my father was working as a tailor he was completely busy all the time as a tailor. But then when the newspaper started, then whatever he was involved in, he always worked hard at it. And so the newspaper I think first started on a very small scale, and maybe was just occasionally they published the paper. I don't know too much about that, but we all had to start helping then, because there were things that my dad felt that we could do. What we had to do, my sister and I only, was to return the type. Every time the newspaper came out, the hiragana and katakana, which are the simpler characters, we already knew. And so we would take the type, and it's not like today's papers where everything was all set up. It's individual type. Everything was, each... and kanji was brought in, and they had a little, I don't know what you would call it, to put in all this type, and then all of it was put together and then the paper came out. Then every time the paper came out it had to all be separated and put back in its places according to the way it was. And we had to put all the hiragana and katakana back, and so then my father could use it again to do it. So our job was always to work and do that. And so we didn't have as much time to play. Of course, we had to do our studies, and went on with our studying, but it was a job that had to be done.

AH: And how would you compare your involvement in the paper with Tetsuko's involvement with the paper?

SH: Because she was the older one... at that time when my father was there, it was about the same. We both helped in whatever we could. And later on, as the newspaper grew bigger... what had happened was that the tailor shop was on one side and then they, I think they rented the house, the place next door. And so they opened up a door between the two storefronts, and the store next door became the printing part, and then my father's tailor shop gradually disappeared and all the things started going out, and he wasn't doing much tailoring. And it was, as the paper got bigger, all the big presses came in and all.

AH: My sense is that the 1941 continued to be the address for the newspaper even through the war. Is that right?

SH: Correct. But actually, the newspaper was in the 45 area. But that was the storefront where the office was, and so the part where my father had his tailoring shop became the office of the newspaper.

AH: I had sent you some things that talked about the origins of the newspaper, and they put the origin of the paper in 1933. And when you sent me some stuff, you said you thought it was 1938. Can you explain why there's this discrepancy?

SH: Right. I think that it could have started in '33 but it was very, very... what would you say? Maybe once a month or something like that. And we didn't have it printed in our shop. Instead, I think that what they did was... maybe it was a once page newspaper or maybe smaller at the beginning, and it was sent out and printed, and then it went to just mostly the Buddhist people who were paying to have it sent to them. And then as it grew, then the tailor shop completely disappeared.

AH: Is it fair to say that your father, by inheritance, got into tailoring, but actually by his own preferences got into newspaper work?

SH: Well, it may be that way, but it also is because I think that he was the only one who could do that kind of thing. Because he was a leader in the community, and I remember that when they were first starting to talk about building the new Buddhist church, he was the one that had the blueprints. Somebody had drawn those up, and I remember that the people would come to our house. And my father would get the blueprints out, and he'd spread 'em across the tailoring table, and then they would all look it and my father would explain things to them and then say how he felt about it. He was a quiet man but very forceful in the things he did. And he also was one that the people from the countryside would come and they'd ask him to be the one to go with them to the doctor to be the interpreter or translator for whatever they needed to ask the doctor about, then they would be very grateful to him. So I think he was kind of a leader in the church as well as in the community. And so they asked him to do it, I don't really know.

AH: Well, there was some sort of moral obligation he felt, then, to do this?

SH: I think that's what it was.

AH: Now, there was a tradeoff, though, wasn't there? Because economically his family is growing and he's got more kids, more mouths to feed and everything, and giving up the tailoring for this venture must have been tough on the family.

SH: I think it was, but then I think that's around the time that it started to become maybe economically to his benefit to transfer his interests into that part because he felt that he could make a living on it. I really don't know because he never talked about that sort of thing with us.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.