Densho Digital Repository - Noboru Richard Horikawa Interview

Densho Digital Repository
JACL Philadelphia Oral History Collection
Title: Noboru Richard Horikawa Interview
Narrator: Noboru Richard Horikawa
Interviewer: Herbert J. Horikawa
Location: Medford, New Jersey
Date: August 27, 1994
Densho ID: ddr-phljacl-1-3

[Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

HH: Today is Saturday, August 27th, time now is two forty-three, and we're at Medford Leas and doing an interview. What is your full name?

NH: My full name is Noboru Richard Horikawa.

HH: And what is the name of your wife?

NH: My wife's name is Emi Kito Horikawa.

HH: How many siblings do you have?

NH: I only have one, one sibling.

HH: What are the gender of each one, the one sibling that you have?

NH: He's my brother. [Laughs] What do you mean by that?

HH: How old is he?

NH: Oh, is that what you meant? He's sixty-one.

HH: How many children do you have, and what are their names and ages?

NH: I have two daughters. The first daughter's name is Susan Kimi Lazarus, and she has one daughter, so that's one granddaughter for me. And Ann Michiko Horikawa is the other daughter, and she has three children. And you want their names?

HH: Yeah.

NH: The oldest one is Jane Catherine Manari, and then the second one is Patrick Kito Manari, and one of the most recent ones is Richard Noboru Manari.

HH: Oh, that's your name.

NH: That's right.

HH: Okay. What kind of education did each of your children receive?

NH: Susan Kimi went through the usual public school system in Swarthmore, and then went to Tufts University in Boston, or outside of Boston. Ann also went through the Swarthmore school system and went to Boston University. And Susan Kimi did not continue her education, but found employment in a bank in Boston. And Ann for a master's degree in communications after Boston University, and that was at Temple.

HH: Did she complete that?

NH: She completed that, and then finally she didn't get to use it, but she's a housewife now.

HH: Where were you born and how old are you now?

NH: I just turned sixty-eight. I was born in San Francisco in 1926.

HH: And your parents' names?

NH: Father is Shojiro Horikawa and the mother's name is Kinue Horikawa.

HH: Where were they born?

NH: Father was born in Shirakawa, Fukushima-ken Japan, and mother was in Nara. I guess that's... I'm not sure what town it was, but that's also in Japan.

HH: You said that you were born in San Francisco. What is the San Francisco that you remember, that you grew up in? What kind of city was it?

NH: It was, we were brought up in a community where there were a concentration of Japanese culture there, it was called Japanese town, but we were a little bit on the outer fringes, so we weren't really in the middle of that community. I remember the churches were usually Japanese American, but highly... going toward more Japanese than Caucasian. The ratio is almost ninety-nine percent to one. And that's the kind of environment it was all around San Francisco where I grew up. Even the YMCA was a Japanese YMCA, I mean, there were a bunch of Japanese there. And the Boy Scouts were mostly, consisted of American, Japanese American nationality.

HH: What kind of schools did you attend in San Francisco?

NH: It was the usual public school, the elementary school was Raphael Weill, and then from there went to John Swett junior high school, and then from there to Lowell High School, and that's when the war began and we were evacuated at that time.

<Begin Segment 2>

HH: And how old were you when the war broke out?

NH: 1941, so that would be fifteen, sixteen.

HH: You were about...

NH: About the sophomore year in high school, tenth grade.

HH: Do you remember much about what it was like to move out of your home in San Francisco?

NH: Well, you mean... when the war broke out, we couldn't believe it was true and we didn't know what the consequences was when this happened. But it came to my mind that when the curfew started, we were really kind of being imprisoned in our house, and we couldn't go out freely. And I guess I didn't really feel the full impact at that time, I was too young to realize what was happening. But it was a Sunday morning, I could remember, and we just came back from church. And we were eating lunch, and this news came over the radio at that time. And after that, everybody was wondering what was going to happen.

And we heard the federal authorities were going around rounding up people, and I think it was our neighbor, Mr. Enomoto, was picked up and sent to, or interned in one of the camps in Dakota, I think it was, Bismarck. And I remember you had to, we got the order for evacuation, so we had to get rid of all our property. And I remember we had a brand-new Pontiac, and I think the full price at that time in 1941 was about six or eight hundred dollars for that car, but we had to get rid of it for about three hundred. So that hurt my father's feeling about that. And we had to... oh, his print shop was sealed by the FBI for I don't know what reason, but it was sealed, we couldn't get in there, and we couldn't settle the property there, until later on, we were able to get in. And we took one press that he wanted to keep, so we stored it at Gyosei Gakuen, which is a Japanese Catholic church school. And the other things were sold, probably at real rock-bottom price. And our household goods, I guess we sold most of it. We stored some of it with friends, but later on, we couldn't locate them. We did find a few rugs that we had that were retrievable, but the other things, they just disappeared as far as I know.

HH: All right. As far as the evacuation is concerned, where did you go to in San Francisco?

NH: Well, we had relatives in Watsonville, California, near Salinas. And to keep the family unit together, we got permission from the authorities to move down to Watsonville. And we moved down there, and after we settled our property there, we moved down to Watsonville and we evacuated with the Toda family, that's our relatives.

<Begin Segment 3>

HH: Where did you move to?

NH: From there, we went to... well prior to the evacuation, I had the opportunity to go to high school in Watsonville. And that's the first opportunity I had to ride in a school bus, I never did that before in my life. Anyway, right after that, we got orders to move out, and we went to Salinas rodeo grounds. And I think we stayed there from about April to July, I'm not too sure about that timeframe. And then from July, I think it was July. In fact, it might be July 4th that we moved into Poston, Arizona, and you were loaded on train, coach train with lines drawn down, I remember that. You weren't allowed to see where you were going, and it took a little over, maybe one or two days, and the temperature got very hot as we went. And when we arrived in Poston I think the temperature must have been over a hundred degrees at that time. And I could remember old people who were getting heat prostration, and, in fact, some had even, had died due to some change in temperature.

HH: Do you remember anything else about those camps in Poston?

NH: Oh, yes. The first thing that really struck me was that very hot and dry place. And then when we were in these barracks, I couldn't believe that we could see the ground between the boards on the floor. And another incident that happened was when there was a windstorm. The dust would come right up between these cracks, I could remember that. So to reduce that or eliminate that, we had to really stuff with newspaper, wet newspaper, and we stuffed it, caulked it up, and that helped a lot. But another thing is these barracks were, the outside covering was tarpaper, and they're black, and so it really got hot inside. And there was no way that we could stay in there very long during the day, so you had to be outside. And I could remember one time my dad rigged up a burlap curtain in front of the doorway when the wind blows, and he had water dripping, and he soaked the burlap. And so we had an artificial type of air conditioning there. But that wasn't too cooling, but we did anything we could do to try to stay cool.

HH: How long did you stay there?

NH: Let's see. July... probably about a year. Went through 'til about, yeah, about ten to eleven months.

HH: Then what did you do?

NH: Well, first thing was all young people were involved with starting or continue their education. So they had a makeup school system set up there where the teachers were, at the beginning, were people like a pharmacist would be the chemistry teacher, engineers would be, maybe math and science teachers, anybody that was in the office became secretarial teachers. So that's the way we started the school, in these empty barracks that were available. And later on, I remember during the summertime we built the bricks for the school, it was adobe type of construction. And we all helped him making these adobe, because it was easy to make these adobe due to the hot weather we had there. And you get a mixture with mud and straw and you put it in the frame and you lay it out there in the sun, and it's pretty thick. It's almost two-by-two by maybe six inches thick. And we made hundreds of those, and they used those to make the walls. And then one day we had a full day of moving equipment from these barrack classroom into the new ones. But I didn't stay there very long to enjoy that school building because by then, I had an opportunity to come out to the east to get a formal education in the Philadelphia area.

<Begin Segment 4>

HH: You say that you left Poston early, and you came to school in Philadelphia. What are the details of that?

NH: Oh, when the fall semester started, or winter semester or school years started in the camps, I had the opportunity to go to a private Quaker boarding school in the Philadelphia area. And I started to process my paper early in late summer so I could make the fall school year. However, I had difficulty because I had to get Eastern Defense clearance, and that didn't come 'til around December. So when I finally came to Philadelphia, I was about three months behind. So the school was good enough to hold some of the faculty there, and we made up the lost time doing the Christmas recess. And when the Christmas recess was over, then I was up with the rest of the class. And I stayed at Westtown for a period of about a year and a half, and by then, I had reached the age of eighteen. And the draft board got a hold of me and I had to go. The school, and we tried to delay my induction until June because it was, from February to June was what's left of my school year, but the draft board there refused our request, so I had to leave. But before I left school again, accelerated my courses, and I made up everything that the class would have been taught for that rest of the year, and I left. And my parents went to the graduation to receive my diploma.

HH: You came to Philadelphia by yourself, you were about seventeen years old.

NH: That's right, that's right.

HH: Was that a tough trip to make?

NH: No, I had a little advantage here because my aunt, Mary Toda, who was at George School, which is another Quaker boarding school, she was working there and she was already here when I arrived. So I wasn't coming to a city without anybody to look after me.

HH: All right, so you felt that you had some kind of support, some kind of resource.

NH: That's right.

HH: So it sounds like the rest of the family came to Philadelphia while you were at Westtown.

NH: That's right, they followed soon thereafter I arrived, and they lived in, first they were in a hostel and then they found a place, apartment, and my father was able to find employment in a printing place called Kunio Press up in North Philadelphia, which is no longer in existence now, but that's where he had his employment.

<Begin Segment 5>

HH: So you went into the army?

NH: Yes, I went into the army before my graduation, and ended up in Camp Gordon in Augusta, Georgia. And I had my basic training, and I was ready to go out on my last two weeks of bivouac before being shipped out. In that period of time, they found out that I had Japanese language training, which I had in San Francisco going to school after public school. They gave me a test, and I passed those tests so they send me to the Army Intelligence School in Fort Snelling in Minnesota. And I continued studying there, the war was still on with Japan at that time. So they were training us to be what they call a voice interceptor, which means that you were interrogate any prisoner that was captured. But the war had come to an end in, I guess it was in August, so they flipped the whole curriculum to document training, so we studying Japanese language from a point of the, reading documents. And I was shipped to Japan, and it was, period was December, I remember it was Christmastime. And I stayed there for a period of one year. We were tested continuously while we were being shipped over because if you did not have the qualification to read and write, then you were switched over to become an interpreter. And being shipped to Korea when there was a surge of refugees coming through the peril up there in Korea. But I managed to stay in Tokyo and work in the document section, and the document section was called Allied Translator Interpreter Service, which was part of General MacArthur's group.

HH: Did you ever regret coming to Philadelphia?

NH: No, I never felt... I don't know what you mean by "regret."

HH: Well, I'll put it this way. Speculate, you were likely to remain in California, assuming that there were no war?

NH: Well, this is hindsight, but if I didn't have this opportunity, I guess I would get back in the same rut as I was in before. Being in a Japanese community, your experience in the outer world will be quite limited. Maybe it wasn't as fulfilling as I see it now.

HH: So from that standpoint, you would have room for less regret for having come out here.

NH: Oh, yes, yes. It was really, gave me an opportunity to see more of what's around me than if I had gone back to San Francisco.

<Begin Segment 6>

HH: By the way, when and how did you meet your wife?

NH: It was after I had finished college, after I got discharged. I was working in a chemical laboratory, and we had a Japanese youth organization in Philadelphia, and they got together and we did plan different social activities, and that's... well, Emi had come to do postgraduate work at Graduate Hospital, and she was also looking for social activities, so she came to one of these group meetings, and that's how I met her. And from there, we got married. She finished her postgraduate and went to work for Smith, Kline and Smith Pharmaceuticals.

HH: And then how long have you been married now?

NH: 1955. So what would that be? Thirty-eight years.

<Begin Segment 7>

HH: All right. In your time from the time you were living in San Francisco to your time in the army and your time Philadelphia, how would you assess the quality of racial prejudice that you encountered? And I'm making an assumption that it changed over a period of time. Maybe it did not, but if it did not, just say so, but I'm assuming that it changed you. In what ways did it change over the course of time?

NH: Gosh. As far as racial prejudice or discrimination, I didn't really experience any of that at all. And I think this is primarily due to the fact that I started out in a Quaker school, and then after finishing the army service, I went to school and then the summer school were also, was working at a chemical laboratory, and that was a Quaker oriented company, it was Philadelphia Quartz Company, which was really run by the Elkington family of, which is a pretty well-known family in Philadelphia. And so I was treated quite equally with my peers.

HH: The army is not known for being all that humane. Did you find that there was some kind of crude forms of bigotry that were there?

NH: Not in the short period of time I was at basic training. That was a mixed group that was Caucasian, Blacks, was well as we had several Asians in that unit that was in basic training. But soon thereafter, I got separated again and got into a Japanese American grouping because of the Japanese language in Intelligence. So there was no real discrimination there.

HH: Do you identify with the label "quiet American"?

NH: Hmm. Yeah. I guess I consider myself as being one of the quiet ones, because I didn't become a real activist and shout at inequality or anything like that. Even though we were evacuated, then constitutional rights were denied, but I didn't go out on protests much.

HH: Didn't throw any bricks?

NH: I didn't throw any bricks or did anything like that. So you're right, I guess I am a "quiet American."

HH: As a "quiet American," one of the things we find ourselves doing is being inconspicuous, but from time to time, we're pressed into a position of being conspicuous, being very visible. How do you feel about those instances when you are thrust into a position of being very visible?

NH: I didn't feel, being singled out or made public example of anything like that. Everything seemed to be positive as far as I was concerned.

HH: Were you ever embarrassed?

NH: Because I was Japanese?

HH: Well, how about this? Were you ever embarrassed because your parents were not as, in quotation marks, "American" as other, your friends' parents?

NH: No.

HH: Have you ever experienced disliking yourself for being Asian?

NH: Now, that's one thing I could say I wasn't. Because there's nothing you could do about that.

HH: If Japanese happened to be your primary language, it was the first language that you spoke, first language that you were taught after you were born. If that's the case, what pains have you taken to maintain your facility in speaking and writing this language?

NH: You mean after I did my service? I didn't do much after that. I didn't pursue any continued education in Japanese language. The only thing I did was write letters to my in-laws, because they were not fluent in English. So I did write Japanese letters, and then they would write to me in Japanese and I would have to read it and kind of translate it to my wife, because she didn't have much Japanese training there.

HH: Do you sometimes forget, even for a brief moment, that you're not quite...

NH: You're not quite what?

HH: That you're not Caucasian? Many Japanese Americans lived in a Caucasian community, and they associated with Caucasians.

NH: Oh, no, I don't try to act like a Caucasian.

HH: Do you sometimes inadvertently -- not that you make an effort to do this -- find that all of a sudden you come to a realization that you're not...

NH: You're not a Caucasian but an Asian? I guess sometimes I do, yeah.

<Begin Segment 8>

HH: Take an inventory of your friends, people you consider your friends. If you should classify that, as to their ethnic and racial makeup, how would you see them break out? Which is the largest group?

NH: Would be Caucasians.

HH: Caucasian. What's the next largest group?

NH: Well, the Japanese American community.

HH: Okay.

NH: And then after that, we'll come to Blacks.

HH: To what extent do you identify with the concerns of Latinos, Native Americans and African Americans?

NH: How...

HH: The kind of things that they struggle with? Latinos, Native Americans?

NH: I'm not... yeah, I know what you mean. Sometimes I wonder about that, and I really haven't gone into that kind of situation they're in. Is it because we're "quiet Americans?" I don't know, maybe that's it.

HH: To put it another way, to what extent do you identify with the label the "model minority?" I mean not identify with, how do you react to the label? That's better yet. How do you react to the label "the model minority," which is the term over the years to identify Asians?

NH: You mean because they're more or less disciplined and... is that what you mean? They're educated?

HH: They're said to be educated, they're said to be employed, they're said to have stable...

NH: Yeah.

HH: Do you believe it?

NH: In a way, I do. I guess that's due to the fact that we were brought up by parents that had certain values. And we tried to honor those values, and I could remember my parents would tell me, "If you do something bad, you really bring disgrace to the family, so you want to avoid that." So you always try to maintain a straight line rather than something that's...

HH: Not bring shame.

NH: Right.

<Begin Segment 9>

HH: All right, the last question I have is, to what extent do you feel that your values, your appreciation of art, food, religion, other ways of living life, has been influenced by your Japanese roots?

NH: I guess the way we were brought up is the respect that you have for your elders and that type of thing. And you always want to educate yourself. My father was like that, he's always trying to instill any of that, do a lot of reading, and he was a guy that, with a lot of dictionary, and he had to increase his vocabulary, and that kind of thing rubs off on you. I really think it speaks to the upbringing of your parents, the way you were brought up. And if you lacked that kind of thing, then you miss out on a lot of things.

HH: That concludes the questions I have, but at this point, can you think of any event, any experience that might, marks the kind of turning point something that has been a significant event in your life that should be mentioned, that made a difference in your life?

NH: Made a difference in my life? The one thing that really sticks in my mind is the type of world we live in now is, to me, it's really violent. There's always some kind of a war going on. And you don't really realize what kind of impact this will have on you until I had this experience in in Japan when I was there for that year. And during that year, the Japanese government had confirmed that my uncle, which is my father's brother, had been killed in the battle on Saipan. And at that time, the family said, well, we're going to have a memorial service, and I went. And it's too bad that he was on the one side, and that was on this side, and I was in my GI uniform going to a Japanese soldier's memorial service. And to avoid that kind of thing, it's too bad the war brought this on. And if human, mankind can't get together, this kind of thing is going to keep repeating and repeating and become miserable. I don't know how to answer that. But that has little impact on how I look at the world now. So if you could live a better, peaceful life, then you'll be better.

HH: Thank you very much.

NH: You're welcome.