<Begin Segment 15>

CO: Tell me about -- did you have aspirations of being a writer when you were nineteen?

HY: Oh, yeah, because I was, when I was fourteen, that's when I started writing for the Japanese American newspapers. And in Oceanside, I was busy writing and getting rejection slips. Going to the library, bringing back piles of books to read. Yeah, that's always been my ambition.

CO: What kind of a writer?

HY: Serious writer, I guess. But the stories that I've had published, I was just writing about the things I knew, so now I'm called a pioneer in Japanese American literature. [Laughs]

[Interruption]

CO: When you say serious, novels?

HY: No, no, not novels, just short stories. Well, with housework and everything and bringing up kids, I've never had even the desire to write a novel. Maybe jot down poems and short pieces.

CO: Did your camp experience enhance that desire or change it?

HY: No, it just, the writing desires remained pretty steady from the time I started. And even now, I guess it's just a compulsion or habit, I still, whenever I can, I get to, I still have a few ideas that I want to work on. [Laughs]

CO: Well, since before the camps there was this sort of nurturing situation. Now, had that continued, can you imagine where you would be today? Or, because after the camps, the nurturing situation didn't seem to be...

HY: I don't know. I guess the Japanese American press would have continued publishing and I would have continued to write for them. Which is mostly what I've done anyway since the war, you know.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 1994, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.