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KL: Okay, so this is Kristen Luetkemeier, this is tape four on September 10th of an interview with Hope Kawashima. You were talking about your training, and I'm curious about how, I mean, you had a real focus on both music and on therapy, do you, how do you feel like your early experiences with being forced out of your home and in these confinement camps and stuff, do you think that there was an interplay between those experiences and your work and your study in therapy? And how did those things relate, if they did relate at all?

HK: Actually, when I was working as a music therapist, we had to read the case histories of different patients, and when I read their stories, then I was always thankful that I had a family that stayed together even with the difficulties we went through. Whereas many of the patients had (...) families (that) broke up or else they went through other types of personal trauma, whereas I was grateful that my parents were always there for us, no matter what we went through, even if we went through difficult times. So I found that, (and) I think having a strong faith, our religious faith was very important and I found that when I was working as a music therapist, I would play different kinds of music for the patients and I noticed that they responded best to hymns and church music. I would do these little programs and pass around song sheets. They responded and would sing the hymns most. And there was particularly one patient that was catatonic, she didn't speak or sing or do anything for ten years, but then (...) when I brought the hymn book she started singing. So everybody was amazed because she had never spoken a word. From then she (would) sing, and then she started talking. So I felt that the music was a healing force for her and for other patients too, and particularly to renew their faith. Because of course I think real healing comes from God. But then we used these channels of music or talking and so forth to help them to recover, and so I felt like the music, especially church music, is very important. But then I was concerned that maybe the people that came into the (...) psychiatric hospital, were too far gone, or they'd been under difficult situations and then sometimes they would get well in the hospital, then they'd go home and then face the same situation, (and) bounce back in again. And so I felt that if they had more religious faith in their families, if their families were more loving and understanding, there would be less of the psychiatric problems they were having. Because many of them became either drug addicts or alcoholics, and they depended on that rather than trusting in a God that could heal them or save them.

So that's why I wanted to go to seminary, because I wanted to learn more about how God can heal people or how God can help people. 'Cause I knew just music alone doesn't do it, you know. And so I think that having gone through a difficult childhood, or different traumas in my life as a young child, helped me to understand how other people go through difficulties and how it affects them emotionally particularly. But then I think that having faith in God, you can overcome these difficulties. And then, (...) you have to learn to forgive what's happened, because sometimes the people that caused your grief (...) it's hard to know exactly who, but you just have to forgive (...) and overcome the difficulties and not kind of feel sorry for yourself and kind of wallow in all the bad things that happened to you. You have to think of all the good things that can happen to you if you have faith in God, and so I think that with God's help you can overcome any difficulties. No matter how traumatic your life might've been, if you learn to forgive those that have hurt you, then just go forward and rise above the difficulties.

KL: Who is your husband? What is his name?

HK: My husband is Mas Kawashima.

KL: And what was his family, did his family have an experience with any of the confinement sites?

HK: No, because he grew up and went all the way through college in Japan. So he, of course, faced all the difficulties in Japan, and he says he remembers being hungry all the time because they had a shortage of food. And then he said that because of his age he was sent to his aunt's place who lived in the country, because they could raise their own food (...) but he says he remembers eating lots of pumpkins when he was young. But his experience in Japan, of course, was quite different than my experience here in this country. But he remembers having to run for shelter whenever they heard the planes going over their city and bombing.

KL: Did he ever, or his family ever encounter any of the people who repatriated or expatriated to Japan in '46 or '7?

HK: I don't think he would recall or know that, no. No, because that's kind of hard to know, because he's been working here in this country -- Because he got a scholarship to Fuller Seminary when he graduated from college, and so then he got his Bachelor of Divinity degree and then he was helping in this church in Pasadena, a Japanese American church for, Presbyterian church there. And then they sent him to San Francisco Seminary because the Presbyterian church required that any Fuller graduate has to go to a Presbyterian seminary, at least one school year. So that's why he came up to San Francisco.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.