<Begin Segment 13>

CO: And so you are, are you aware of the internment as having a profound effect on us?

JH: Yes, subsequently, of course, I know that the internment experience has really changed the nature of the Japanese American community and family. And there are a lot of things about internment, of course, now I understand that racism as an ideology is something that's just a part of American society from the time the republic was established. Because I feel that the colonists came over at the time of western colonial expansion over the world when all of the colonial empires were being established. And with that kind of mentality, the colonists came over and saw the Indians here and classified them as savages and expropriated their land. And the blacks and the Asians and the Mexicans and the Filipinos and everybody else that have, third world has come, subsequently has been suffering the same treatment. And I see the same treatment being extended to the more recent immigrants from, for example, Southeast Asia. So that I don't think that things have really changed, basically, when we consider that the Isseis who came over were never able to achieve citizenship. And then all the anti-Asian legislation that was passed means that what happened during the internment was just a part of the same process.

And when we see that the things like, even after the strike at San Francisco State, I think probably there aren't more than a dozen Japanese Americans on campus even now as faculty. I ended up as being the undergraduate dean, but when I left, I think I was probably the only Asian American in the administration. And here is a school that must have about a third Asian American students. A half are ethnic. And I doubt whether we have more than 10 percent ethnic faculty. So that I just see that there's a kind of an implicit ideology of racism still existing and things haven't changed all that much.

One of the things -- talking about the internment experience -- one of the things that really blows my mind, it's a kind of an irony of ironies where you have a situation where you have Niseis volunteering for the U.S. army out of a concentration camp, into segregated units to fight for democracy. That's really mind-blowing. And when you take into consideration that they're doing this to prove their loyalty, which is something, which is a birthright; it's a birthright of citizenship. To have to go to the extent of having to prove your loyalty by going through this process from an internment camp, is really something. And I think this is something that America in general ought to be thinking about and looking into.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.