Densho Digital Archive - Alfred Miyagishima Interview (denshovh-malfred-01-0024)

<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Within this last year, a fairly well-known Nisei, Bill Hosokawa, who was a writer in Denver, passed away. And Bill originally came from the Pacific Northwest, and so, so I've heard stories about Bill Hosokawa in Seattle and places like that. I'm curious, when he was in Denver, did you read much of his work when he was in Denver?

AM: Bill was an honorary member of the American Legion. I did not deal too much with Bill. I met him... Bill was a quiet person. He never, in my opinion, never went out of his way to say, "I'm Bill Hosokawa, how are you?" and this and that. He wasn't a, to me, he wasn't a warm person. He was an observing person, but he wasn't a warm person as far as I'm concerned. Min Yasui was from Hood River; he was an attorney. We made him an honorary member of American Legion, but Min did a lot for the Japanese people here. He did a lot for the American Legion, offering opinions and this and that. He was more of a, a person that I would look up to, rather than Bill. Bill did things for, for his own way.

TI: Well, an so you had both Min Yasui and Bill Hosokawa, and both of them were, were very active in the JACL, especially during that early postwar period. So did that make Denver a stronger town for the JACL? I'm curious what roles they played in the community around these issues.

AM: Well, a lot of people that I knew, the younger ones, resented the fact that the JACL in the first place didn't appreciate the Japanese being taken off the coast and relocated to the Salt Lake area. They, from what I know, they didn't, they weren't for that, they didn't want them to relocate up there. Here again, this country's gotten smaller and smaller, the whole world has gotten smaller and smaller, and I think there was a lack of communication in those days. From my own experience, people in California were, like from a different country than people from the interior. And I guess I can say at this point -- and I've changed -- is that because of that, there was this discrimination. Because the people in Salt Lake didn't know the people on the coast. I myself from the interior went to California, I didn't know those people. They were different. Some of those places, just like what I hear about being in Japan, they had outdoor furo, you know, the bathhouses and all that kind of stuff, we never, "What's that?" you know. That's, seemed like it come from a foreign country. But they had lot of those customs they retained there. They had more of a closer tie to Japan than people from the interior, and I think that's because there was more Japanese there and they intermingled more. They pretty much spoke the same language, whereas people out here, why, you're next door neighbor is ten miles away or something like that, that spoke Nihongo. And most of your contacts was with the Caucasians.

TI: So let me, let me see if I can clarify. So a lot of the leadership of the JACL was located in Salt Lake City, and you're saying because they didn't understand, really, the Japanese on the coast as much, that was one of, you think, the reasons why the JACL was more... what's the right word? I guess cooperating with the government to put people in camps?

AM: Uh-huh.

TI: And part of that was because they just didn't really understand the West Coast Japanese as much. So is that what you're saying?

AM: Yeah, I think that was, you know, just the communication and all that, like I said before, the world has gotten real small, and you could stand next to a guy and you don't know where he's from, he could be a million miles away, so to speak. But in those days, my gosh, even if you went on a trip of two or three hundred miles, that was...