Densho Digital Archive - Mika Hiuga Interview (denshovh-hmika-01-0018)

<Begin Segment 18>

AC: So when you arrived here in Ontario, you had your family. Was there a Japanese American League here?

MH: Yeah, JACL. There's a Snake River JACL and Boise Valley JACL which is right across the river. I think it's called Nampa Boise. They're not too active, but the Snake River JACL here is, the third generation has taken over, and it's quite active and we support them.

AC: And so did you, when your children were born, were you, did a lot of things to keep them tied to the Japanese community?

MH: I think church, there's a Methodist church over here and the Buddhist church here. Church, we used to take them to church. But as far as when they were young, there wasn't any, what you call, Japanese things for the younger folks. For us, there were but not for them.

AC: I guess when did the thoughts of redress first begin to surface?

MH: I understand it was the third generation that decided this was not right. The Niseis did not, third generation, so there is a Ujifusa from Wyoming who was very active, and so I didn't think we'd ever get anything. I just figured, but we were lucky that they lobbied and got us this redress.

AC: And how did the community feel once redress had been achieved?

MH: Say that again?

AC: What was the general feeling in the community after redress had been achieved?

MH: Before it was passed, there was this gentleman, I know him. He ran for county councilman, and he was elected. But anyway, at that time, he had this pickup and he had this huge board which said, "The Japanese should not receive this money." Then of course, we had an election and he was elected. And I don't know what he's thinking, but I personally did not vote for him. [Laughs] And he is saying, in the paper, he's saying we shouldn't help the Four Rivers Cultural Center, and I am on the board, and I feel that we need all kinds of help from the city to keep that place open. But I notice he said Four Rivers doesn't have to have that, so I hope the other councilman disagrees with him.

AC: So Bill Hasegawa --

MH: Are you talking about Mr. Hosokawa?

AC: Hosokawa, Bill Hosokawa was named, the Nisei as the "quiet Americans." How did redress changed that? I think the attitude change, did that attitude change for the Nisei after redress?

MH: I don't think it's just redress that changed. I don't think it is. I think it's just, like when you go back to Hood River now, you never know what all happened. You just never know it because everybody's getting along okay. But in order to achieve that, some of us had to go through some of these hardships. But I don't think it's only redress that did it. I don't think so. People are people, you know.

AC: What do you mean by that?

MH: We're all good. There's good in everybody. And sometimes you have a leader that is not good, and they kind of go we him, but most people are good. There's some good in anybody. So if you just think that way, we'd get along.

AC: Yeah. We've talked about all kinds of things. Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you'd like to talk about?

MH: I don't know whether it's in this interview, but like I told you, I have been asked to talk about evacuation and internment by many groups, and I'm fortunate they do ask me; civic groups, high school, grade school, and even now at the Four Rivers Cultural Center, the schools bring their classes. I just had one Wednesday to a high school group, and I always tell them, I says, "I'm very happy to tell you about my experience because I don't want it to happen to anybody ever." I say when the Iran crisis came on, I worried about them, but it just kind of passed over. So I think it was war hysteria that did it. You know, it's all of a sudden this happened, and we were thrown into camp, and it was a lot of big expense for the government too, to build these camps and keep us going. But of course, we lost our income because we had to leave our places.

AC: Do you see parallels between Pearl Harbor and 9/11?

MH: No. No. It's a different situation that Pearl Harbor was nation to nation. 9/11 is terrorism, and we're still fighting it, facing it. You don't know.