Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0027)

<Begin Segment 27>

TI: So, Mas, you said you were looking at three in terms of trying to really see the glass half-full in terms of, there were pockets. But there must have been people who resented the fact that their community was trying to prevent them from coming back.

MH: Oh, yeah. But the thing was that there were people that were vocal in our support. I mean, the war's over, the war is over. And May Lord, a schoolteacher, Miss Flores, eighth grade teacher, Mrs. Roarke, Jack Hamilton, T.S. MacQuiddy, teachers, lawyers, John McCarthy, Philip Boyle. Philip Boyle was threatened with his job if he came out outwardly in support of us, yet he did. There were farmers that supported us, there were church ministers. The Lutheran church, there's not one Japanese Lutheran in town, yet the Lutheran church and the Baptist church opened up their doors. And they had collection of clothing, blankets and such for us. So there was support for us to return. (Narr. note: In addition, Doctor Oscar Marshall and his wife, Opal Marshall, were tremendously kind and helpful in their support of the Watsonville Japanese American community before, during and after World War II.)

TI: But yet the vast majority was still against you, based on that, on that vote that you described earlier.

MH: Yeah, but they were against Okies coming in the 1930s, and they were against Mexicans and they were against Filipinos and such.

TI: Okay, and so again, it didn't surprise you.

MH: No.

TI: And if anything, what surprised you was that there were three that actually...

MH: Three that were, that stood up, and we're very grateful.

TI: Were there any events or incidences of altercations during this time against Japanese Americans?

MH: Not that I know of, except my own. I had a fight with Norm Tuttle, he called me a "Jap" in the fifth grade and we fought. I don't know who won, I don't care, but he became one of my best friends all through school.

TI: How about the surrounding communities, like Salinas, Santa Cruz? Was it pretty similar in terms of how the communities treated Japanese coming back?

MH: The communities were different. Watsonville and Monterey, Monterey, they, people took out full-page ad welcoming, in the newspaper, welcoming Japanese, Japanese Americans back. Monterey's different, unique, in the sense that, remember the earthquake in San Francisco in 1906? Many of the artists moved out of San Francisco, came down to Monterey, Carmel. So there's an intelligentsia there, that helped. Now, Salinas and Hollister, they had military, national guard units with a tank battalion. And it was federalized, the national guard unit, and sent to the Philippines. And these guys are gonna get wiped out, 'cause there's hard feelings there. Many of the Japanese, Japanese Americans will not return to Salinas. Many of those who are there now are what we call Shin-Issei, come after the war.

TI: So in general, did the population of Japanese and Japanese Americans drop after the war compared to what it was before the war?

MH: Yeah. We figure maybe a third didn't come back. Others came back for a while and then went elsewhere. But at least in Watsonville, there was some kind of a welcoming, and we found jobs. And the jobs basically were working out in the strawberry fields, and then little by little people wanted their own plot of land to farm. Strawberries saved us in many ways. It's intensive work, it's hard work. I... we didn't have child labor laws, so ever since I was ten years old, I worked out in the fields picking bushberries and strawberries, and cleaning lettuce, cutting lettuce. If it grew here, I picked it. What's kind of interesting is that many Mexican American students, they go, "What? You Japanese Americans worked out in the fields? I thought we were the only ones." No. I worked right beside Mexican American students out in the fields. So I'm very grateful to strawberries, because it provided my scholarship for college.

TI: Scholarship, or just the financing for your, your college?

MH: Everything I made went into the college fund. I didn't get a scholarship, graduated ninth in, in school, but there were only six scholarships, and two were for agriculture. There weren't that many scholarships in those days. I'm just amazed at how the Kokka family and others, they sent eleven kids, or ten kids to UC Berkeley. I don't know how they did that.