<Begin Segment 16>

EO: Just a last thing is, you're, you're aware of all those studies that took place?

JH: Yes.

EO: Do you have any thoughts about those? Were they good, were they bad, or useful?

JH: Well, in retrospect, the various kinds of studies, my... of course, there were some studies done at the behest of the government, their community analysts. And then there were other studies like the Japanese evacuation and relocation studies that was done by the University of California, which was somewhat autonomous from the internment authorities, from the WRA. But to me, all of these studies suffer by virtue of having a dominant society framework. For example -- I mean, what I mean by this is that the kind of social sciences we learned in the universities are basically a Western social science. It rests on certain kinds of assumptions that have been developed over the years in the, in Western social science. So that to me, all of these studies bear a certain kind of bias, a dominant society bias. I think this is why it's so important for the development of ethnic studies, which challenges some of the basic assumptions. So that now we can re-look at the experience to re-interpret those kinds of experience from the perspective of those who went through the experience.

EO: That's what we're trying to do here. One of the things, the assimilationist thing, you know, you said that that's bias... could you just make a statement about that? You know, people come from the position that everyone can assimilate. Isn't that in your paper?

JH: Uh, I guess I'm not catching the trend that you're trying to...

EO: I think it was something that you wrote that I read was that one of the biases of social science, and basing, looking inward, that everyone can in fact be in the melting pot.

JH: Well, that's... yeah. I guess in certain times, it was thought that the United States, all the immigrant groups that are coming into the United States would eventually assimilate into the dominant society norms. And I don't think that this is happening because there are cultural differences throughout the United States on a variety of grounds, some are regional differences, some are class differences, and some are ethnic differences. And these don't seem to be disappearing so that we're becoming a one, kind of a homogenous society.

CO: Besides the fact that some are not allowed to assimilate.

JH: Well, that's true. There are a variety of reasons for this existing. But for me, I think it's very important that I recognize and appreciate the kind of cultural background that I come from. My parents are not white middle-class people. My parents came from Japan, and they socialized me, they raised me, with the kind of values that they thought were very important. So that for me to really understand myself, I have to understand where they were coming from and how that relates to me. And unless I understand that, instead of assimilating, I think I will never discover who I am or what I'm doing here.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1992, 2003 Densho and Emiko Omori. All Rights Reserved.