Densho Digital Archive
Oregon Nikkei Endowment Collection
Title: Mika Hiuga Interview
Narrator: Mika Hiuga
Interviewer: Alton Chung
Location: Ontario, Oregon
Date: December 4, 2004
Densho ID: denshovh-hmika-01-0022

<Begin Segment 22>

AC: So when you, when your parents and your brother returned to Hood River and after you finished in Salt Lake you also returned, you had mentioned some of the troubles that were going on.

MH: Uh-huh.

AC: Can you tell me more about life, about that? I understand there was an Anti-Japanese League going on there?

MH: Yeah, you see these, in the newspaper, people signing this signatures on, I don't know what they're signing, but they were not for us. We had some dear friends though, but the majority was kind of anti to us.

AC: How did that make you feel?

MH: This is winter now. I've lived here all these years, and I've grown up here. Why do you feel that way? I just feel, what changes your feeling because we used to, when I used to go to school, I used to walk to school. And on the way home, there is a store, grocery store, and Dad or Mom will say, "You buy some hamburger or you buy something," and we used to trade with them. Well, they just turned right around after we were evacuated. I don't know what people think, you know.

AC: Did you ever go and talk to these people who were from before?

MH: No, no, I don't dare.

AC: Even after all these years?

MH: Yeah. Well, they're gone. They're gone.

AC: Also, you've mentioned that, there's the American Legion Honor Board where the seventeen Nisei --

MH: Uh-huh.

AC: What else can you remember about what was going on at that time with that board?

MH: Well, it came out in the Stars and Stripes. It came out in the Stars and Stripes. And I thought, "What is that American Legion thinking to take off those names? They're serving in the service just like their own son." It was just anti-discrimination. I don't know. You just wonder what people are thinking when they do something like that.

AC: Because your brothers' names were on that board?

MH: Yeah, two of them.

AC: And so how did you feel?

MH: Like I said, I don't know what they're thinking.

AC: And it didn't make, it wasn't in the local papers. It was just in the Stars and Stripes that came out?

MH: Yeah. They said it came out in the Stars and Stripes. So the guys in the service were thinking, "What's going back home anyway?" you know. They're questioning the acts of the people in Hood River. It was one of the worst places on the coast I would say, and we didn't do anything wrong. We just were sent to camp and left our homes, and I was glad there were seventeen people in the service already and more after that.

AC: So did you ever go down and look at this wall?

MH: Well, you can't help but see it. It's on the, against the courthouse wall. You drive through town, you can see it.

AC: So how did you feel when they put the names back?

MH: I thought, "Oh, good for the National American Legion of the United States." See, there's always someone who can correct wrong, there is, like the gasoline and like, but it takes time. And in the meantime, there's all that feeling, you know.

AC: So how did you deal with all those feelings?

MH: Well, I'm glad they had, they put them back up there, and I just feel that we didn't do anything wrong, and we're just innocent people, you know. But now, you go back, you never know that this happened. In fact, the Japanese are well respected in Hood River. I had a friend who was in the fire, firemen's group. He passed on, and I went to the funeral, and I think in that church, I don't know how many rows of pews it took for the firemen to sit. It was just, you know. It was a memorial to him.

AC: Again, you had mentioned your friend, Frank Hachiya.

MH: Uh-huh.

AC: And he passed away in the service of the country. Do you remember anything about the circumstances of his death at all or even how, I mean, where were you when you heard about the news?

MH: It must have been while we were in camp because he was killed in the Pacific where my brother was. To this day, we don't know whether he was shot by the Japanese soldiers or whether he was shot by the American. There's a question there.

AC: Do you know what he was doing at the time?

MH: No. He was probably doing what my brother was doing, being in interrogation. But you know, it was hard for the Niseis because they had Japanese face. They might have had American uniform on, but they all had the same faces of the enemy, and so whether it was them or us, we don't know. And it's unfortunate that he was taken. But of course, a lot of the boys gave their lives in Europe too. You know, George's brother, George Iseri's brother was killed in France.

AC: So your brothers, one of your brothers and your husband were also in the MIS?

MH: MIS, uh-huh.

AC: Did they ever speak about what they did?

MH: Well, my oldest brother didn't say too much about it. But my husband, he was in Tokyo, and so it's just a farce. When you lose or come to lose, then they're tried for, tried in a trial, and he had to participate in that. But when we went back to Japan when we visited after the war was over and we had taken a trip, he was trying to find the building that they were stationed at. He says, "Every morning, General Douglas MacArthur would come in. They'd all have to salute him." He was trying to find the building that they were built to that. But evidently, he was gone, but he was in Tokyo.

AC: And he wasn't deployed until after the war had ended?

MH: He was the army when the war ended. He was already in the army. And then they said because the war ended, then they sent him to Philippines and to Japan because there was no fighting now. But my older brother went through all that fighting in the different islands, you know.

AC: Did he say about where he --

MH: Yeah. The only thing that was bothering him, they called it "jungle rot." On his neck when it was hot, it would irritate and come out, but that was the only thing that he would talk about that he was suffering from his experience. Yeah.

AC: So anything else that you... we talked about all kinds of things. Is there anything that cropped up in your mind that you'd like to speak more about?

MH: Not really. I think I've told quite a bit about our family and my life, and I appreciate it.

AC: Oh, no, we really appreciate you taking the time and telling us in such vivid detail your extraordinary life. Thank you so very much.

MH: Thank you.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2004 Oregon Nikkei Endowment and Densho. All Rights Reserved.