<Begin Segment 7>

AH: Now we know that during World War II in the so-called "voluntary evacuation" of people, people who were leaving and coming from California and other places, Washington and Oregon, to Denver, that there was a swelling of the population. Was that starting to occur even before the outbreak of the war? Did you notice as you were getting older, as you were in high school, that there were more Japanese and Larimer Street was getting a little more crowded?

SH: No, not until the war.

AH: So the war was the watershed, right?

SH: Right, and it was around the time that people started to come in, it was after the war started.

AH: Okay. Well, you've talked a little bit about the founding of the paper, and then we can talk a little bit about the development of it because it later on became quite expansive in terms of its coverage.

SH: Yes, yes. I think that as the newspaper started to go out to more and more people, because I remember that in the beginning I don't think it was much. I have a feeling that they used to just mail a few to each of the big cities around there, or towns, but then as it got to be going out, not only to Colorado but to Wyoming and Nebraska and all, then that's when it just really started to grow. And this was right after, I believe it was right after the war started.

AH: Why don't you get into that a little bit about how the community changed with the war, the impact of the war on the community, but also, as you saw it, on your family and even your own life in that period of 1941 to 1943, the early years of the war.

SH: Well, it was a period when it was kind of exciting, because there were so many people of Japanese descent coming. So in our schools, too, there were many, many Nisei kids that came to the schools, and it became so that there was actually a table at lunch where all the Nisei kids would gather and eat together. It was quite exciting to see so many people, and we got to meet people from all over California. And they would tell us that they're from Fresno or whatever, Sacramento, and we started, "Wow, there is another place out there besides Denver." And so it was quite exciting. It was just a period when different shops started to come in, too. There were more Japanese people who started restaurants around there, there were probably three or four restaurants and barber shops and beauty shops and dentists and all kinds of people coming in. It was an exciting time.

AH: It was a very exciting time from what a lot of people say, but there was also reports that some of the old prewar Japanese American population in Denver was not necessarily hospitable to the new people coming from California, and they didn't use the word, "We're getting 'Californicated,'" but they did talk about California and sometimes even use a K instead of the C to indicate that there was some kind of problem.

SH: Well, I think that they were a little bit wilder than we were. [Laughs] I know that we would talk and they'd say, "Oh, there's a lot of chick sexers here." And they'd talk about these people, guys that would be going around on motorcycles or the little scooters, and they brought a kind of a different lifestyle, many of them. They were just not the people who followed the rules of the Japanese people.

AH: But you must have been in a situation where your family benefited by them coming, because they were more subscribers to the paper, advertisers and everything else, and yet at the same time, your family's got a lot of daughters, they're probably worried about some of these California guys, huh?

SH: Yes, because it was a different kind of a community then. And I don't think that they necessarily joined the churches, but they were more worldly. And so it was interesting to watch that growth. And so it was an interesting time because people were coming and taking all kinds of jobs, or if they didn't have jobs, they were on the streets. It just became like a real Japanese town then. The stores became just full of people, and they started to establish bigger grocery stores, and I think a lot of the others in the community moved out.

AH: If we were to have your high school yearbooks here, would we be able to look at the ones that were your earlier years and your later years and see a difference in the number of photos of people with Japanese faces?

SH: I think so. Sorry that I don't have any, but I think that it would be very definitely so.

AH: And how was your personal feelings about this growth? You were excited by it, or were you alarmed by it or a mixture?

SH: No, I was excited by it because there were so many people that were coming that I could talk to. And in the past, because I had just come home from school and would be at home going to, just studying and staying within a one-block area and just going to and from school. Then now we had friends that were coming in, so we met people, and it was a good time, I think.

AH: I noticed when I was in Denver that they have a number of ways to commemorate Governor Ralph Carr.

SH: Yes.

AH: And do you remember the buzz about him by your family and other people as to what his stand meant to the community, to the family?

SH: Yes. I remember people were very, very excited and happy because he was the only governor who stood up and said that the Japanese people were welcome to come. He said they were welcome to come. And so then many people who didn't know where to go decided to stop in Denver. And many of them said that they were afraid to even get in the car and go out because they had heard about cars being overturned and people picking on them and all. But then when he said that, then it just really was an influx of Japanese. And so then there were some, including one who later became my husband, who came to the newspaper then, and he had no... because he didn't know much in English, he saw "Japanese town" and he came and looked in. He came with several buddies from California. And they just were walking around, and when they saw a Japanese newspaper they were excited and came. Then he asked for a job and he started working.

AH: And he was Kibei?

SH: He was a Kibei, yes.

AH: And so how soon had he, how recently had he come back from Japan?

SH: The year before.

AH: The year before. So he had been fairly socialized in the language of Japanese, right, so that his English was not...

SH: He was not able to speak much English at all, so he could not go out and look for much of a job in the American community. And so he was very much interested in the Japanese people there.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.