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BN: We'll get to the Nakata --

LH: Horiuchi side?

BN: Horiuchi side in a bit, I just want to finish up with your mom's side. And I wanted to ask you about her, this essay contest and the trip to Japan that she makes in 1939.

LH: Yeah, I feel a little guilty about that. I think we all did, probably, because she would always be sort of bragging about that. But she had bragging rights, it turns out, right? Because I found out that she submitted an essay for this, I think this is the Japan Tourist Bureau, actually, because they were associated with the Golden Gate International Exposition, 1939 to '40, which I know well because I actually wrote this article about the Japan Pavilion there. And she was part of that. And as I write about it, the Niseis really participated, the community participated. There were a lot of people... there were people designing, actually, for the Golden Gate International Exposition, that's (what) Gail Dubrow (researched). So there's this really sort of deep connection to Japan, and there was this, of course, Japanese imperial narrative running through all of those displays and programs that were being held. It was their chance to sort of showcase the empire, the 1939 fair, both in New York and in San Francisco. So my mother apparently submitted this essay, she won, they were, like, four people were awarded the trip to Japan. One was a man, and I can't remember all the names, and I can't remember all the names, it's in her diary and records, but he was a Stanford student and she just, they were really good pals, and there were two other women, I think, on the trip.

BN: At this point she's a Berkeley student, at that point?

LH: No, no, she's University of Washington.

BN: I'm sorry, Washington. Okay, I'm getting mixed up, yeah.

LH: University of Washington, they were both University of Washington grads.

BN: Right, okay. But she's in college at that point?

LH: Yeah. She's part of the Fuyokai and just really, there was this very tight Japanese American community which still exists in a lot of ways, right? The legacy of that Fuyokai there. Yeah, so she was very tightly integrated into that sort of community. She also wrote a letter with Gordon Hirabayashi protesting the evacuation. So this trip was in 1939/40, and so because it was sponsored by the Japanese government, again, she got to stay in the Imperial Hotel. There's this photograph of them in front of the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo, that's where they started. And she's actually chronicled, I found her diary which chronicles the whole trip. She travels all over Japan, but then they ask to go to see Manchuria, which is a pretty adventurous thing to do at the time. And they actually make it all the way into Mukden and then back. And she chronicles this, which is pretty extraordinary. Just this relationship of what she sees in terms of the Japanese military and government and what she'd seen there.

BN: Have you read through the whole diary?

LH: I have, yeah.

BN: What's her general, is there skepticism and embrace of more objective... what was your sense of her, what she was taking from all of this that she'd seen?

LH: You know, not that much. I think she was just very carefully chronicling her day, which was very much a Japanese tradition to maintain a diary. It was that classic Japanese diary.

BN: More, "We did this," "We did that," type of thing?

LH: Yeah.

BN: As opposed to reflection.

LH: Well, there was interesting internal reflection that she did about her family and about her connections, but not too much politically.

BN: Did she get a chance to see her older sister?

LH: I'm sure she did. Because they actually, there's a lot of back and forth between Japan and with the children, and I'm not sure how much my grandmother went back and forth, but the children definitely went back and forth. I know my grandmother's at least on one of those trips, and they knew (Matsuye) in Japan, they knew their Shikoku cousins, and they were very close to them. And I didn't realize that until really... I didn't realize how close the connection was until I started going through all the photographs in the papers and then I could see that they formed, they bond these friendships that lasted their entire lives. So we went back, I think, in 2006 and we were able to see the younger cousin Mariko Goto, but she was married. Maybe she was Yoshi, but she's Goto, in Hanoura. Before that, when I was younger, 1983, my mother took me to Japan and I met Kane Goto, that was her cousin. I guess Mariko was her cousin's daughter, yeah, that's right, second niece. So Kane-san was, like, amazing. She was the matriarch of the Goto clan, and she was still working in the fields until very late in life, yeah.

BN: How long was she -- your mom -- how long was this trip?

LH: How long was she in Japan?

BN: Yeah, the '39/'40 trip.

LH: I'm not sure, I'll have to check the dates. I think it's about six to eight weeks, something like that.

BN: So substantial.

LH: No, no, it's a very substantial trip.

BN: Must have been covered in the papers, too, right?

LH: I have found very little mention of it, yeah. So I looked for it, and Greg has never sent it to me and he's the one that, he's been the newspaper now, right, he's been through all of the papers.

BN: Although I wonder if it might be more covered in the Japanese sections.

LH: That's my problem, I do not read and write Japanese.

BN: Yeah, nor I, nor Greg.

LH: That was, I can tell you about that, but anyway...

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.