Densho Digital Archive - Mas Hashimoto Interview (denshovh-hmas-01-0031)

<Begin Segment 31>

TI: And part of that is, I'm curious, how did you first start teaching about the World War II experiences of Japanese Americans, in particular the incarceration of Japanese Americans?

MH: Well, I told my students that I spent three and a half years of my life in prison during World War II and such. And the textbook only had two chapters -- I mean, two paragraphs, not chapters -- two paragraphs. One about, we were interned, and the other was the 442nd, fought well, that was it. And I'm going, "Wait a minute, there's more than, more than this." Thank goodness for the JACL, national JACL education committee, Greg Marutani and Carol Kawamoto and others, they decided that we need more. And it was a ten-year campaign to get the social studies curriculum changed and adopted, and then have the State Department of Education approve that. Then we had to have -- this is in Sacramento -- then we had to have textbooks written. Well, it was perfect because it was not just about the Japanese Americans, it was about women's rights, it was about blacks, about Hispanics, other groups. And so it was all part of that civil rights movement, and we had to include it. Now, if we can have it for the California, California has the biggest market. So if you could, North Dakota's not going to write their own textbook. So if you could have the California market, you could sell to the other states as well. And these guys did it.

TI: And so the, now the textbooks that...

MH: The textbooks includes four pages of the Japanese American experience. They take excerpts from Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's book, they have stories about Senator Daniel K. Inouye, captain in the United States Army. Wow.

TI: And so I'm curious, so when you first started teaching about what happened, and as it evolved, can you talk about that in terms of, did the story... how did you change how you presented the story, if at all? I'm curious if it changed.

MH: Did I follow the textbook? [Laughs]

TI: Yeah, I'm curious.

MH: Sometimes. It depends on the topic. I do a lot on what we call American values, and that's Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism kind of mentality, I do that. But I also point out the contributions made by black Americans, by Asian Americans, by others, and one of the points that I make when I speak to students in different, different schools, I said, "You know, my mother was Japanese, my father was Japanese, but I'm not Japanese. I happen to be an American of Japanese ancestry." I used to ask the kids, "Okay, take out a piece of paper, draw an American." And sometimes they would draw a baseball player, and I go, "You know Ichiro Suzuki?" Sometimes they'd draw an Indian, Native American, I said, "If you guys don't know what an American looks like, draw me, because I'm an American who happens to be of Japanese ancestry. It's isn't just a white person, white Anglo-Saxson Protestant, no, no. We're all uniquely Americans." Native American girl from New Mexico, I said, "Which do you prefer to be called? Native American or Indian?" She says, turned it around, she says, "Were you born here?" I said, "Yeah, I was born here." She said, "You're a Native American, too." And I'm going, "Yeah."

TI: That's a good comment.