<Begin Segment 24>

MR: Some time ago, one of your nieces made a documentary about your family. Could you say something about that?

HY: Yes. You're talking about Lise Yasui who's my niece, my, Shu's oldest daughter, and she made a documentary, oh, man, that must be twenty-five years ago, I guess. And the whole thrust of it is that because it caused her father, my brother Shu, so much pain, he couldn't talk about some of the things that happened in his lifetime, his experience with prejudice and discrimination. And the most key thing that he kept from her and from his own wife for many, many years was the fact that my father committed suicide, and my father committed suicide partially as a result of his prolonged incarceration in the justice department, not entirely, but partly because of that, and my father, my brother Shu could never bring himself to tell his daughter that. He didn't tell his own wife that for many, many, many years. And that was the thrust of Lise's story, how painful these things can be. So it was, it was a project that took, it was a thirty-minute documentary tape. And then some Boston TV station wanted to expand it to an hour long, so that's what she did. And the story isn't how it was so painful to my father. He didn't tell her about my, my father, his father, being in an internment camp for over five years and how it affected his physical well-being, his emotional well-being, and his mental well-being, particularly his mental well-being because it was so painful to him to try to reveal these things. So he even kept it from his wife I don't know how many, thirty years or so. She didn't know. I knew and because, he's my brother, see, and I love him, so I'm not going to tell.

MR: Also, a woman named Lauren Kessler wrote a book about your family. Could you comment on that?

HY: [Laughs] Well, I feel like a one-man talk show. But anyhow, Lauren became interested in our family because as I told you earlier, my sister Michi should have graduated from University of Oregon in 1941 because, well, 1942, I'm sorry, because she was a senior at the University of Oregon. She couldn't because the curfew law because the graduation ceremonies lasted until 10 o'clock at night. Curfew said after 8 o'clock you can't be outside of your residence which was a dorm in her case. So the dean of women appealed to the military authority to ask them if can they make an exemption so she could, this co-ed can attend her own graduation. They said, "No." There were no appeal for that. So she never, she never got to attend her own graduation ceremony. Well, forty-some odd years later, University of Oregon registrar's looking through the register said, "Hey, this woman was never presented her own diploma in 1942 in May." So they tracked her down and they asked her would she come to a special graduation or to a graduation ceremony in 1984, I think it was, '84, yeah, and be one of our main speakers on the platform. She says, "Well, sure I will," and so that's what happened. And Lauren Kessler, who was a professor of journalism, she happened to be there, and she was intrigued by this story about Michi's getting her graduation diploma and being on the platform with all the bigwigs and making a little speech there about the wartime efforts. She got interested in the family, and then she found out about Min, and then she found about my father, and so, and then she found out that when my oldest brother Chop died, he left a whole barn full of artifacts and possessions and pictures and articles and everything from the store and the home and the farm in the barn in Hood River. And his widow, my sister-in-law, Miki, asked Yuka and me if we would look through this thing and see if there's anything we should keep. So I said, "Well sure, I'll do that," because I was retired by then. But Yuka lived in back east, and she says, "Well, I'll spend what I can." So she spent a couple weeks looking through it. But it was mainly me, and Miki and I, so we went up there for weeks on end sorting through all the things. Hey, this stuff is not only interesting but historically very valuable. So we were not all that dumb this time. We were smart enough to recognize, hey, this stuff is historically relevant. It's important because this is a rare thing because here is an intact collection of an ethno-cultural group. These were very, very rare, so we recognized that. So I talked to two people. One of them was Lou Flannery at the Oregon Historical Society; another one was John Cox who was a librarian at the library at the University of Oregon. I says, "Would you guys be interested in this?" And Doctor Cox says, "Well, yeah. If you can bring it down, we'll take a look at it." But Lou Flannery says, "Oh, yeah. In fact, I'll go up there to look at it with you. And in fact, I'll even bring a truck and two helpers, and we'll haul it down there. We'll put it our storage place at," used to be what they call Beaver Hut, the Meier and Frank warehouse. "We'll put it in there, and it won't cost you a cent, and you can use it and go in there any time you want." I said, "Oh, that's a better deal than what Doctor Cox offered." So that's what we did. Miki and I and two helpers and Lou Flannery went up there. We loaded this, I don't know, twenty-some odd foot truck full of this, and maybe we took two loads, I don't remember, put it all in the beaver house. And in the course of the year, Miki and I'd go down there once or twice, three times a week, and we'd inventory, sort all this stuff up and make notes and stuff, took us a whole year, and then we donated the bulk of it to the Oregon Historical Society. So it worked out well for both of us, for the historical society and for us because our collection got saved, and the Oregon Historical Society now has a unique ethno-cultural collection. So that's why Lauren Kessler got interested also because she could access the primary documents, and that's what she did. She spent about a year going to the historical society, making out longer books, and you know, guided her around, introduced to people. And so Lauren is, knows a lot about our family.

MR: And do you feel the book is an accurate representation?

HY: Oh, it better be because I was the primary source. [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2003 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.