REgenerations Oral History Project: Rebuilding Japanese American Families, Communities, and Civil Rights in the Resettlement Era : Los Angeles Region: Volume II

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Harry K. Honda

• Interviewee:
•     Harry K. Honda
• Interviewer:
•     Leslie Ito
• Interviewer:
•     Cynthia Togami
• Interviewer:
•     Sojin Kim
• Date:
•     April 1, 1998 and June 17, 1999

Biography

Harry K. Honda

	"...the Japanese Issei that
	started up business in Little
	Tokyo. They were from out of
	town...those who were in
	business in '46, not all of them
	came back...some had
	retired or passed away.
	Perhaps some didn't want to
	have to get back on their
	feet in L.A.....I guess it was
	such a traumatic experience
	being kicked out, that they
	didn't want to come to L.A."

Harry K. Honda was born in Los Angeles, California. His parents both emigrated from Fukuoka prefecture in Japan. His father immigrated to the United States in the late-1890s, arriving in San Francisco. From there, he journeyed north to Alaska and worked in a cannery. His mother arrived later, in 1918. Eventually, the Hondas settled in the Temple and Figueroa area of Los Angeles. The Hondas had three children: two daughters, Kayoko and Fusako, and Harry, their only son. The Los Angeles neighborhood of Harry Honda's childhood years was ethnically diverse. He and his family lived among Chinese, Korean, Latino, Jewish and Filipino families.

While attending Los Angeles Junior College, Honda worked as a sportswriter for the Rafu Shimpo and he was the English section editor for the Sangyo Nippo ( Japanese Industrial Daily). In 1941, while employed as an assistant English editor at the Japanese American News, he was drafted into the military. After the United States entered World War II, his family was sent to Santa Anita Assembly Center, and then to Rohwer concentration camp in Arkansas.

On Christmas Eve in 1945, after serving four and a half years in the U.S. Army's Quartermaster Corps, Harry Honda was discharged from the army. He spent a brief period in Chicago where his older sisters had been living. His six-month stay in Chicago offered him the opportunity to renew friendships. In Chicago, he was asked to return a car for a friend in Southern California. During the trip he took further opportunities to reacquaint himself with people who knew prior to the war. Once he drove into California, Honda decided against returning to Chicago.

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Upon his return to Los Angeles, he made use of the GI bill and enrolled at Loyola University in the fall of 1946. He graduated from Loyola in 1950, with a political science degree. That same year, he took a job as an assistant editor for the Japanese American News, remaining there until he was appointed editor of the Pacific Citizen in September 1952. In the following years, Honda has worked with the Pacific Citizen in a number of capacities, including general manager/operations from 1980 to 1990 and senior editor from 1990-1992, and presently, since 1992, as been editor emeritus.

Harry Honda married in 1957. He and his wife, Misako have one daughter and three grandchildren. He remains active in Japanese American organizations and community events, including the Pan American Nikkei Association and the Veterans of Foreign Wars. Honda has been active with the Japanese American Citizens League since the late-1940s, serving as chapter delegate to national conventions, Los Angeles downtown chapter president in 1950, and many other posts.

Interview 1 of 2

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Harry K. Honda speaks about his experiences in the military during World War II, his brief stay in Chicago after he was discharged, and the continuity of Japanese American community life. He describes his experiences growing up in a multicultural Los Angeles neighborhood, and outlines how the city developed and changed during the postwar years. In addition, he recounts his work for the Rafu Shimpo, the Japanese American News, the Pacific Citizen, and other Japanese American newspapers, and discusses the history, scope, and activities of the Japanese American Citizens League [JACL] and the Pacific Citizen during the pre- and postwar years. Leslie Ito conducted the first interview on April 1, 1998. Cynthia Togami and Sojin Kim conducted Harry Honda's second interview on June 17, 1999. Both interviews took place in Monterey Park, California.

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Harry Honda

I'm Harry K. Honda, editor emeritus here at the Pacific Citizen [ PC].

I've been here with the PC since 1952. Right now, my current role is to work on the archives that have been neglected all these years. The whole point of the archives was to make it accessible to the public at large, especially to students who want to learn more about what the Japanese American community [and its history] was like during the war years.

We're very proud of our material on World War II, the camp life, what the Nisei were able to accomplish during the war years. Of course, our files are right behind us—our bound volumes [referring to the documents in the room]. We have this little room here we call our library that students and researchers come and make use of. And our next thing that we really need now is a microfilm reader. Our microfilm collection includes some of the issues that were published before the war. Thanks to UCLA Graduate Library, we have a copy of volume one, number one issue of the Pacific Citizen, which was printed back in October of 1929.

The PC, before the war, was a monthly publication. In June of 1942, it became a weekly. It served as a nationwide newspaper for Japanese Americans. Since all the other newspapers on the West Coast were shut down by evacuation,

the PC was perhaps the newspaper of record of what the Japanese Americans were able to accomplish and what they thought about.

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Thanks to the PC, we were able to print some of the stories that Toshio Mori had written, which was later published as Yokohama California. Some of the other things that Pacific Citizen has are the files of evacuation, some of the pamphlets that were published by the War Relocation Authority [WRA].

Our archives include—what I would say—personal bits of information, what they accomplished, and some of the personal profiles. We're trying to beef that up. We have a lot of newspapers that have to be clipped that have very substantial background information on some of our Issei and Nisei leaders. So that's what we're trying to do with the archives here.

With respect to the postwar years, between '46 and '52, the paper [ Pacific Citizen] was still being published in Salt Lake City. Therefore, it does not have the depth of coverage that the West Coast papers would have had. But nationally, it was able to give a glimpse of what Japanese American communities were like in Chicago, Salt Lake, Denver, Seattle, as well as California.

I was in on the ground floor as far as the REgenerations Oral History Project was concerned, so I'm very happy that I'm able to contribute my little bits of what Little Tokyo was like.

Is that okay?

Ito

Okay. I just want to ask you a few questions about your background. Where did your family live in the prewar era?

Harry Honda

We lived in the Los Angeles area in the Temple and Figueroa

area just outside of Little Tokyo. The neighborhood was very diverse. That's the word to use today. We had Chinese families, Korean families, Latino families, Jewish families. In fact, the Temple and Figueroa area back in the twenties, when I grew up, had three Jewish synagogues in the neighborhood. So that shows you how strong the Jewish community

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was in that area back in the '20s. This is before they started to leave the area for Fairfax , which is still a fairly large Jewish community.

And then when war came along many Japanese Americans were sent to Santa Anita.

and then to Rohwer [concentration camp], Arkansas. In my case, I was already in the service from 1941. I was drafted before the war, so I myself did not participate or experience what the evacuation was like.

Ito

Where were you in '41?

Harry Honda

Well, my military service was mostly in the interior. I took my basic training at Fort Francis E. Warren, Wyoming, just north of Cheyenne. Then we were all transferred to the middle of Texas—Camp Barkeley, Texas, right next to Abilene. And as you might guess, I was in the service in Wyoming taking (chuckles) basic training at the time Pearl Harbor was bombed.

We had a commander on the post who was very understanding. He got the entire garrison together on the parade grounds and addressed the entire troops. He was aware that there were German and Japanese and Italian descent soldiers in training, and he said, "If any of you get in trouble, or anyone makes any disparaging remarks, let me know, because we don't want to tolerate that type of conversation and discrimination." So we felt very much at ease because of that.

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We were able to finish our basic training without any problems. But it was time to move on. We had finished our 16 weeks of basic training. It was the first part of January. It just so happened that there were 80 of us Nisei at Fort Warren. We were all put on the troop train and wound up in Texas. There were a few Italian and German Americans with us.

So when we reported at Camp Barkeley in the middle of January. As we came marching into the camp where we were going to be housed, the fellows there who were watching us march thought we were all (chuckles) POW's, prisoners of war—all these Japanese faces. And again, the captain of our outfit in Texas gathered the troops in the headquarters unit area and repeated the same thing that we had heard in Fort Warren, Wyoming that we had a contingent of close to a hundred Japanese and German and Italian American soldiers here. We were to be treated with the same respect as the rest of them, because we're all in the same war. We're all in the same uniform. He said that he didn't want to hear any bad-mouthing, or he didn't want to see us being teased because we happened to be of enemy race. Because of that, the rest of the guys in the outfit understood. And it was in a matter of a couple weeks that they appreciated the fact that we were able to fit in very smoothly. We got along well for the rest of the war.

Ito

And then, through this period, where was your family?

Harry Honda

My family, at that time, was in Rohwer, Arkansas.

Ito

And at that point, did you have any correspondence with them? Did you see your family?

Harry Honda

Oh yes. We were able to write to them, of course. In fact, I was fortunate enough to visit them in camp. Where we were in the middle of Texas, it took us a little over a day to get to Arkansas by train. So I had one furlough there and was to visit them on weekends. Being in uniform, it gave us a little more freedom, because I was able to visit friends in Manzanar

[concentration camp, California] and at Gila River [concentration camp, Arizona] where I had cousins.

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Wearing a uniform in spite of an Asian face, I had no problems. I think the war years for me were unusual in that some of my buddies wound up in the 100^th and 442^nd and some went to Military Intelligence Language School. But in my case, I managed to stay four and a half years in the U.S. with the Quartermaster Corps. By the time the 442^nd was being organized in late-'43, I was on the list to go, but my captain pulled me off because I was engaged in the training of quartermaster officers in other outfits.

Camp Barkeley happened to be a training ground for two infantry divisions. The divisions were there for three to four months at a crack, and then would go overseas. And part of my job was to assist and train some of the enlisted men and officers of how the Quartermaster Corps operated.

Ito

What is the Quartermaster Corps?

Harry Honda

Quartermaster Corps was the outfit that was responsible for requisitioning and distributing supplies. In other words, they were able to gather the uniforms, the food, and all the other modes of transportation, and distribute them to the soldiers, to the troops, to the divisions. That's what the Quartermaster Corps was. What else is there?

Ito

It says here in December 24, 1945, you left the army?

Harry Honda

Yes. When I was discharged on Christmas Eve in '45. At that time, the army had commandeered all the available passenger trains because so many of the soldiers were coming back from overseas. And we were on a troop train that they must have resurrected from a museum. It had a Coleman lamp for (chuckles) illumination and a potbelly stove in the middle of the car for heating purposes.

I was discharged at Camp Grant, which is in Rockford, Illinois. And of course, it was snowing that day; it was cold. But we didn't mind the weather, because we were getting discharged. I wound up in Chicago.

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My sister, Kayoko, was in Chicago at the time. I had a lot of friends from L.A. who were also living in Chicago. So I had planned to stay in Chicago. But I wanted to see my parents who were already in Los Angeles at that time. I was given a chance to drive to the West Coast and take a car back there. I told my mom that I was planning to go to school or find a job in Chicago after I visited with them for a while. She was kind of disappointed in hearing that. But when I was driving across the Colorado River—I'm back in California. Right then and there, I said, "I'm not going back to Chicago. It's too cold." (laughs)

Ito

At that point, why was Chicago such—?

Harry Honda

Most of the Japanese Americans who were out of college or at least out of high school or junior college were already working in the Chicago area.

During the mid-forties, a lot of the Nisei were leaving camp to work in the Chicago area, because that's where the jobs were. That's where they were readily accepted for employment. And no one thought of ever getting back to the West Coast. Of course, they couldn't go back during the war years. So I was going to join them. I think at that time, Chicago must have had close to 30,000 or 40,000 Japanese Americans in the mid-'40s.

Ito

How long did you stay in Chicago?

Harry Honda

I was just there for no more than a half a year.

Ito

And what was your living environment there?

Harry Honda

I was staying at a hostel in Chicago. It was run by the Catholic Youth Organization, CYO. I had friends there that were there before me, and they said, "Yeah, we have a place for you to stay." So these were guys that I had grown up with in L.A. before the war, so I felt pretty much at home.

Ito

Can you describe the hostel a little bit more for me?

Harry Honda

It was not the kind of hostel that—there were about four or five residents. So, it was like a house almost. There were no Issei there. It was basically Nisei. It's not the type of hostel you would think of out here on the West Coast where you had maybe six, seven families together constantly moving in and out.

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Ito

Was it mostly men, or was it a mixed group? Were there men and women staying at this hostel?

Harry Honda

Well, the housekeeper and her family.

Ito

And were they Catholic, or were they Japanese Americans?

Harry Honda

No. They were just Japanese Americans. The reason why I say Catholic Youth Organization is that they owned the building, and they wanted to be a part of the resettlement program by helping out. They had the building, and they had space available for maybe half a dozen people plus the housekeeper. So you didn't have to be a Catholic (chuckles) to go to the CYO.

Ito

So you stayed there for about a half a year?

Harry Honda

Yeah. So I got to know Chicago pretty well.

Ito

And during this period, were you working?

Harry Honda

I was collecting $20 a week as a veteran. I think it was $20 a week.

I was looking for a position. But being a newspaperman, there was nothing newspaper-wise. So I was helping out. Let's see, who was I helping out? There was no Chicago Japanese American newspaper at that time. So I think I just looked around. That's why I wasn't going to school or doing anything at the time. So it was kind of an unwinding process for me.

Ito

So then you took the trip across the country to visit your family, your parents. Where were your parents after the war?

Harry Honda

They were in L.A. In fact, back in the same Bunker Hill neighborhood, you might say. Today, it's right next to the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion.

Ito

Did they have a hard time finding a place?

Harry Honda

That I couldn't say. I wasn't aware that they had a hard time.

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Ito

I'm curious as to the role the WRA played in the resettlement period, in particular with your family or yourself. Did you have any help from the WRA?

Harry Honda

I don't know if the family received help. I didn't have WRA help.

Ito

So, could you describe a little bit more about—you said that the weather was one reasons why you didn't return to Chicago.

Harry Honda

I think anybody who was born and raised in Southern California will always make comparisons about how good the weather was when they were growing up compared to living in the Midwest. I think if a person has a good job in the Midwest, they won't mind the weather. It's part of life that way. But in my case, I didn't have a job.

Ito

As a journalist, was it more beneficial, then, for you to be in Los Angeles?

Harry Honda

At least in L.A., the Japanese American newspapers were already in business in '46. But instead of that, I decided to make use of my GI bill.

Since I had served four-and-a-half years in the service, I was entitled to four years of college. So I spent my four years of college at Loyola University.

The reason why I went there was that it was a small school. I didn't want to go to a big institution like USC [University of Southern California, Los Angeles] or UCLA [University of California, Los Angeles], so I chose Loyola. I had some friends there already. It didn't take me very long to find other friends who lived out my way. So we were able to jump into one car. Four or five of us would commute to school that way.

Ito

What were you studying at Loyola?

Harry Honda

I was a poli. sci. [political science] major. At that time, Loyola was all-men, and it is still where it is today, in Westchester. I graduated in 1950.

Ito

When did you start?

Harry Honda

In the fall of 1946.

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Ito

And what was your reception on campus with administrators and faculty?

Harry Honda

No problem at all. I would say, there was no more than—maybe the student body was about 2,000—between 1,500 and 2,000. I would say about 400—especially those in our liberal arts college class from '46 were basically veterans. The veterans were at least four or five years older than the rest of the student body. So we were looked up [to] like we were seniors by age. I think there were no more than half a dozen Asians on campus. Three of them happened to be Chinese Americans. The chairman of our political science department happened to be Chinese. So we got along real well. (chuckles)

Ito

And then, during this period were you active in the Japanese American community?

Harry Honda

Well, at that time, I was writing a column for the Rafu Shimpo.

That was the extent of my writing activity. Perhaps on the weekend I would socialize. But other than that, it was basically studies.

Ito

What type of column were you writing for the Rafu?

Harry Honda

Well, it was more or less on the light side. Nothing serious. Maybe you might find a point or two some place along the line. Here, I was trying to—not so much amuse—but at least entertain. Write an entertaining type of column. I still use the same name, "Very Truly Yours." It's a name that was concocted in 1941.

The late Henry Mori, one of the workers at the Rafu Shimpo before the war, named his column, "Making the Deadline." So I followed. At that time I was working for the Sangyo Nippo, which is no longer around. But it was a morning newspaper, as opposed to the Rafu Shimpo being an afternoon newspaper. So Henry's column was called, "Making the Deadline." My first columns at Sangyo Nippo were called, "After the Deadline." So it was kind of a play on words.

And when I started to contribute to the Rafu Shimpo in 1940, I decided to take a job in San Francisco. Togo Tanaka,

English section editor at

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the Rafu Shimpo, said, "How about writing the same kind of column you used to write?" And I did. But he said, "We'll call it 'Very Truly Yours.'" So that name has stuck since '41. I still use that title.

Ito

So you had associations with the Rafu Shimpo before the war, and then when you returned to Los Angeles, you sort of resumed your relationship?

Harry Honda

Yes. I could have, but I opted to go to college and make use of my GI bill. I'm sure Mr. Akira Komai

(chuckles) would have loved to have me help, but I decided to go to school instead.

Ito

Can you tell me a little bit about Little Tokyo during this postwar period, and maybe a little bit of contrasting [it] to the prewar period?

Harry Honda

One of the first impression that I had of Little Tokyo after the war was that most of the Issei who had started businesses were basically Issei from outside of Little Tokyo. They were either Issei fishermen in San Pedro, who couldn't go back to fishing, so they started stores or restaurants in Little Tokyo. Then, we had of course, the S.K. Uyeda Ten Cents store.

It was the first Japanese store that opened up in Little Tokyo back in '45. He's originally from San Francisco. There were quite a few Issei who were not from L.A., who felt the opportunity was here in Los Angeles to rebuild Japantown.

The Issei leaders who had stores in Little Tokyo before the war were all picked up and put into enemy alien internment camps. Maybe that experience was too much for them to revive Little Tokyo in the same manner. Maybe if they were younger, they might have resumed their prewar occupations or stores.

Ito

Can you tell me a little bit about the relationships between African Americans and Japanese Americans during this time in Little Tokyo?

Harry Honda

I missed all that. [I'm sure that] those who were here in '45 when the West Coast first opened up must have had some problems trying to regain their property on East First Street. At that time, [the] East First Street area was called Bronzeville,

settled by war workers from the South who happened to be African Americans. But eventually, the Issei

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who had property were able to regain their premises, or the landlords were able to get these black Americans out so that their places could be resumed as businesses, as opposed to housing.

But that's all from what I've read. I have no personal experiences of what it was like in '45. That time can be related to you by those who were here. They can best fill in this part of Little Tokyo history.

Ito

What drew the Japanese Americans back to Little Tokyo during this postwar period?

Harry Honda

What attracted them? Perhaps weather. The other factor would be family. The parents were probably here on the West Coast trying to settle, and perhaps they were asked to come and help. Perhaps being with other Issei friends. I'm sure the Issei still preferred to get along in their own language. Not many were able to speak English, especially in the Midwest where you had to. And perhaps they felt much more comfortable living on the West Coast, especially in the cities. Perhaps that explains why Little Tokyo was able to get back on its feet.

Ito

So you graduated from Loyola in 1950, you said. And what were your plans?

Harry Honda

Mr. Saburo Kido

was a legal counsel to the New Japanese American News, [ Shin Nichibei] the third Japanese vernacular in Little Tokyo. I was helping him out during my senior year on weekends and writing short stories and stuff, as he needed help. So when I got out of school, he said, "You can come and work for me," which I did. I was assistant editor at the paper to the English section editor. It was one way to keep me out of mischief, you might say. I was also working in the county assessor's office. To me, it was too much like drudgery work. So I left that job to go work full-time for Mr. Kido.

In 1952, when the JACL

decided to move the Pacific Citizen to the West Coast, it was decided to have the paper come to L.A. At that time, Larry Tajiri who was the editor, said he didn't want to come back to Los Angeles, so he resigned. When the paper came to Los Angeles without

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an editor, Mr. Kido said, "Well, I've got to have you take care of the paper." So I was picked to be the editor back in September of '52.

Ito

How long had the paper been in Salt Lake City, and why?

Harry Honda

From '42 to '52, 10 years.

Ito

And why Salt Lake City? Was it just to move it into the interior, or—?

Harry Honda

From San Francisco. When evacuation was taking place, the national JACL headquarters and the PC, which was being edited at the same place, had to relocate. They wound up in Salt Lake City because it was a very friendly area as far as Japanese Americans were concerned. And in '52, the JACL Convention decided it was time to go back to the West Coast, because the situation there had settled.

San Francisco was booming [at that time], and so was Los Angeles. But it just so happened that Los Angeles had more possibilities for supporting the newspaper advertising-wise, because there was a greater business community in L.A. So the National JACL Council agreed to separate the national headquarters and the Pacific Citizen in '52.

Ito

And where was that office? Where specifically was it relocated to?

Harry Honda

You mean in L.A.?

Ito

Um-hm.

Harry Honda

We first occupied a room in the old Miyako Hotel, which was on First [Street] and San Pedro [Street]. The JACL regional office was also in the same building. We were more or less together—the regional office and the Pacific Citizen—wherever it moved. From the Miyako Hotel, we went to Sun Building on Weller Street, and then we moved over together to the Nishi Hongwanji,

which is now the Japanese American National Museum.

From there, we went to the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center.

Now the JACL office is still there, but in our case, we needed more room. So we moved out to—Let's see, where did we move? Third

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Street right by Santa Fe Avenue—in that area. We were there for about six years and two years at Third and Alameda—eight years altogether in the Third Street area. And six years ago, we moved out to Monterey Park [McCaslin Business Park] here. And we've been here in this particular place [Cupania Circle] about two and a half years.

Ito

How long have you been associated with the JACL? Was that previous to your job at Pacific Citizen?

Harry Honda

Yeah. I was a booster to [JACL] national conventions from 1946.

Ito

What did that position involve?

Harry Honda

1946, I was booster, a non-voting delegate, to the convention at Denver. Then in 1950, I was asked to be chapter president for the downtown Los Angeles chapter and went to Chicago as a delegate. And then in 1952, I was asked to be the editor. So that's my connections as far as JACL goes [outside of PC].

Ito

What type of role do you feel the JACL has had in the Japanese American community?

Harry Honda

You mean in Los Angeles?

Ito

Um-hm.

Harry Honda

JACL in the mid-'40s was basically busy resettling families. The JACL officials at that time in the mid-'40s were all bilingual. They had to be, because they were dealing with Issei. They were busy resettling, finding jobs, finding houses for some of these families. [They were] very social service conscious.

For JACL by 1948—they were busy trying to get citizenship for the Issei. So it was a four-year struggle for JACL to pass the Immigration and Nationality Act

so that the Issei could be naturalized in 1952.

Then after that, the JACL's role [in the Japanese American Evacuation Claims Act] was to get evacuation claims for the Issei.

Whereas redress

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today was $20,000 for eligible survivors of the camp life, in the case of the Issei back in the mid-'40s and into the '50s, it was what we call "pots-and-pans" payment. The government had insisted on solid proof of losses.

And of course when evacuation came along, nobody bothered to keep receipts or papers to show ownership, so consequently many claims of losses were not recognized. The government [United States Congress] had an amendment passed [in 1954] so that all they could get was a token sum of not more than $2,500 for losses of personal equipment, personal goods of that type.

Those who lost substantially more were able to sue the government in the Court of Claims, which is a very long process. And still, they were not able to get no more than maybe ten-to-one of what was claimed.

Ito

Did your family participate in this process?

Harry Honda

Yes. At the time, they must have gotten about $2,000 for what I would call on their evacuation claims as opposed to individual redress. And that was more or less a general number, $2,000.

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Ito

How did the JACL help find jobs? Could you talk about this in a little more detail?

Harry Honda

I think the best source for that type of information is a senior citizen by the name of Tats Kushida

who lives right here in Monterey Park. He was regional director in the mid-'50s, and before that, he was with the WRA in Kansas City. He also did relocation work for WRA. He was also JACL regional director in Chicago about the time that I was there. So he had the experience of assisting Issei families find jobs and housing. And the JACL worked very closely with the resettlement program that the WRA had, in intervening for [many] Issei families in government housing after the war.

When they had problems, they would go to JACL for assistance. Of course, there were many trailer homes for returning families. In Long

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Beach, what used to be the navy barracks, was taken over by the government and used for housing. Not just for Japanese, but whoever needed housing after the war.

I think JACL also—not so much the regional office—but the chapters initiated athletic programs. They also, of course, a social center. JACL assisted Issei in interpreting, translating problems of that kind. JACL in those days was very service-oriented, because there were no other organizations outside of the churches. Today, it's just the other way around. We have all types of service organizations, so the JACL has concentrated on human and civil rights.

Ito

How did the Pacific Citizen play a role in all the activities that you have just talked about?

Harry Honda

Well, the paper itself was trying to keep up-to-date with what was happening, not only in JACL, but in the Japanese American community at large. Some of the big stories that occurred—this is before my time—in the late-forties when Japanese American families were coming out to the West Coast and discrimination was still an issue because of the Alien Land Law.

And we had two treason trials—the Tomoya Kawakita trial and the [Iva Toguri] Tokyo Rose trial.

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And we still had problems with Tule Lake

[concentration camp, California]. Tule Lake was still open until July of '46. We also had, I think, public relation problems. The use of the term "Jap" was still prevalent. The PC was able to report on these kinds of issues. Since it was circulated nationally, at least we were able to keep the rest of the Japanese American community across the country [apprised] of what was happening here on the West Coast.

The PC, to me, was very instrumental in keeping the community together in that respect. People out on the East Coast couldn't afford to subscribe to a daily newspaper like the Rafu Shimpo because it was too expensive. So PC had a very definite place as far as Japanese American families were concerned. At that time, families would have to subscribe. Right now, by being a member [of JACL], you would get the paper. But in those days, even a member has to shell out a little extra. I think it was $3.00 or $4.00 a year to get the paper.

Ito

Immediately after the war, families were occupied with rebuilding their lives, and the Japanese American community remained somewhat disenfranchised. At what point would you say was the turning point for the Japanese American community in re-establishing itself?

Harry Honda

What do you mean by disenfranchised?

Ito

Well, just that when they first resettled, it was more the terms of each family's survival, and at what point did the Japanese American community come together and really form a community, or do you think that was happening all along?

Harry Honda

I think the camp experience welded the community a lot closer than people think, because here they were a whole camp full of a same kind, you might say. Being cooped up together for three, four years, they form very fast and solid friendships. Some of them who had farms in Central Valley or Imperial Valley didn't want to go back, because they knew there was nothing for them.

So they would move to L.A. or San Francisco, and track down the friends that they had made in camp to get themselves going. So you could say the community, as you see it today, really was there all along. It's just that they were dislocated because of the war. But I don't think that the

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so-called Japanese community was lost. Now it's being spread out a lot more. Somehow maybe the REgeneration[s] project will pinpoint where we start to fall apart.

Ito

I'd like to talk a little bit about family life after the war. What notable changes in the family structure were evident in you or your family in the postwar era?

Harry Honda

Well, in my case, my youngest sister had already been married during the war years in Chicago, and she stayed in Chicago. So in Los Angeles it was just my sister, Fusako, my parents, and I. And of course, our family was small in terms of numbers. We only had one set of cousins, unlike others that had four, five cousins, families. So our family was fairly tight from the standpoint of being knit.

The Issei were able to stay together because of kinship by prefecture, kenjinkai.

I remember all those kenjinkai summer picnics and the New Year's parties that they had before and after the war. That was a great thing for the Issei. If they did not see their friends from other parts of their own background prefectures, at least they got together at picnic time. I remember your grandfather, Tom Ito, at the same (chuckles) kenjinkai picnic. So we happened to be in the same Fukuoka-ken.

Ito

And can you describe those picnics a little bit more?

Harry Honda

Yeah. I think the postwar picnics were a great gathering place for the Nisei. Aside from the races, and the games, and the entertainment, it was a chance to get together. Some hadn't seen each other since camp, maybe. In my case, some of the guys that I had met in the army were at picnics—not knowing that their folks and my folks were from the same prefecture. And eventually, the Nisei leaders were able to carry on the picnics.

The Issei leaders were getting old. Somewhere in the late-'60s and maybe in the early-'70s, it was getting to be a big job, so they dropped the picnics all together which is too bad. But I think those picnics are now being duplicated, you might say, by clan picnics.

My wife happened to have six brothers and sisters married. So (chuckles), their kids, our kids, and grandkids get together, you have a picnic all in itself, where it's a (chuckles) family picnic [with] the same proportion from the standpoint of numbers. You have maybe 70 or 80 people together.

Ito

Where did these kenjinkai picnics take place?

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Harry Honda

Public parks, mostly. Elysian Park

was a very popular place. Some of the other places that I can think of would be -I remember a couple of them being held at the beaches, Redondo Beach area before the war. But the parks were the best, because it was close to Los Angeles where most of the people lived.

Ito

During the 1940s and '50s, many Nisei were getting married and starting their own families. Does that include yourself?

Harry Honda

No. I'm a late-bloomer, you might say. (chuckles) I married in '57. A lot of Nisei—I wouldn't say a lot, but many Nisei couples were married in camp. They didn't want to be separated, so they got married in camp or before evacuation perhaps. And I'm sure they must have struggled, huh?

Ito

Getting back to your role as editor at the Pacific Citizen, could I have you describe a little bit more about your position as editor once the offices moved in '52 to Los Angeles?

Harry Honda

Well, a lot of that is written up in that story that I just gave you. But in a nutshell, when I took over the paper in '52, [it was] just myself as a writer. Then I had a young lady [employed] to take care of the business side—circulation, ads—and then, we [also] had a typesetter. The typesetter and myself were able to put the paper together. And then, it was sent to the printer. And when it came back [from the printer], we had a part-timer address the papers and who would bundle them off to the post office.

The business manager at that time also happened to be the JACL regional director who did double-duty. We had a pro bono accountant take care of the books. So it was a very humble beginning. It was more fun, than hard work as far as I was concerned. Otherwise, I wouldn't be in this business to this day. What it was—there were long hours involved, and I banked on people making contributions and sending us stories. We had columnists, of course. And Bill Hosokawa

is still

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writing for us. JACL Washington director, Mike Masaoka was also writing for us every week. So we had a very interesting paper.

But I think the best role for the paper was during the war years when it started to publish the casualty list of those who were killed in action, who were wounded in the war. Their names and the next of kin would be on the front page of the paper. It was a very anticipated list of names that people wanted to see in late-'45. But in my case, those days were over, so it was more or less routine to keep up with what was happening around the country.

I was able to develop contributors from different parts of the country who served as a columnist from Seattle, someone from San Francisco, someone from Chicago. Bill Hosokawa was in Denver. So we had kind of a glimpse of what was happening around the country. We even had a columnist from the Rafu Shimpo to write on what was happening in the L.A. area to let people know around the country that this is what's happening in our little backyard here.

Ito

Moving into the 1950s and the beginning of the Civil Rights era, how did the Civil Rights Movement affect Japanese Americans? And also, did the Pacific Citizen document any of the activities?

Harry Honda

Discrimination was still very much a concern for JACL, as well as the community at large. ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] was one of our sources of how to meet this problem head on. PC had a column called "Minority Week" in which we reported in not more than maybe 50 words, different events that were happening in the minority field, especially with the blacks, just to make the Japanese American community conscious of what a minority problem was like. Of course from that, JACL was able to focus on civil rights.

Ito

I've read that the Pacific Citizen is now mostly Sansei-run. Is this true?

Harry Honda

Yes. I would say so. Are you talking about writers?

Ito

Um-hm.

Harry Honda

Yes.

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Ito

And how did that transition come about from the Nisei to the Sansei?

Harry Honda

Well, it' s a matter of age, you might say. Some of our writers have just begged off or resigned. Bill Hosokawa who is now in his mid-eighties is still writing for us. But I think the trend today is that those who are active in the writing field are basically very young Nisei in their sixties or Sansei who are pushing 50. But there's no definitive line—you might say—when the change took place. So it was very gradual. We've had youth writers. When I say youth, they were the young people in JACL—the Sansei writing for us back in the '60s. This is now 30 years, so they must be pushing 50 [years old] today. At least the paper tried to be a place where comments, contributions from all walks of life would find a place.

Ito

And how would you envision the future of JACL and Pacific Citizen?

Harry Honda

Well, I'll always believe that as long as there are problems affecting Asian Americans and Japanese Americans in particular, there will be a need for JACL or an organization like it. And for an organization to be effective, it needs a public media, a public voice, a public way of disseminating information. And Pacific Citizen is able to fulfill that role. As long as it's a newspaper trying to show a balanced picture of what's happening, the paper will survive. I mean, there is a role to fill. And the fact that PC goes across the country is a plus.

Ito

What are the major milestones do you feel in your life?

Harry Honda

My life? I tell everybody I shook hands with Alberto Fujimori

(chuckles) at the time he was inaugurated back in 1990. I was invited to cover the inauguration of his being president, through the good word of Father Luis Martinez, a Spanish Jesuit in Lima who had officiated at the wedding ceremony of Alberto Fujimori and his wife Susana.

I met the priest in Mexico City 10 years earlier, a gentleman speaking fluent Japanese. Of course, he spoke English, so I was able to get along real well with him. And we corresponded and kept it up, for he was the one that told me that Professor Fujimori was going to run for presidency. I reported that in the PC, saying that the Peruvian-born Nisei was a candidate for the presidency in Peru. I think we were perhaps the first U.S. newspaper to carry that little report.

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It was a very little report, but nobody knew who (chuckles) Fujimori was to begin with, except the fact that he taught mathematics at a university. It was like a national agricultural university. So when the news broke out in the major press, the U.S. State Department had to scramble to find out who the young man was that's going to campaign to be president of Peru. They had no idea that there would be a minority person in Peru running for the presidency.

To me, that's the most outstanding (chuckles) event. I can't think of anything else. Not many people can say, "I shook hands with Fujimori." (laughs) Till this day, every time I'm in Peru, or he's passing through L.A., I try to get a chance to say "hello," or at least that much.

Ito

Okay. Just wrapping up the interview, is there anything else that you'd like to add that we left out?

Harry Honda

Well, I hope your REgenerations project is a success, and I'm sure it will be. However if it's going to be distributed, disseminated, when it's done, we're here to help get the word out. You can count on that.

End of interview 1 of 2

Interview 2 of 2

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Togami

My name is Cynthia Togami, and I will be interviewing Harry Honda, editor emeritus for the Pacific Citizen. This is a follow-up interview to an earlier interview done on April 1^st 1998 by Leslie Ito for the REgenerations Oral History Project, a collaborative project done in conjunction with the Japanese American National Museum, the Japanese American Resource Center/Museum in San Jose, the Japanese [American] Historical Society of San Diego and Chicago Japanese American Historical Society. The date is Thursday, June 17, 1999, and this interview is taking place in Monterey Park, California at the Pacific Citizen office. Present in the room besides the narrator and the interviewer, is Sojin Kim, who will be videotaping this particular interview.

In your last interview there wasn't as much information on your parents. Can you tell me about your parents? You mentioned that you attended Fukuoka kenjinkai picnics. What part of Fukuoka were your parents from?

Harry Honda

You want to know where they were from?

Togami

Mmhm.

Harry Honda

First of all, both of my parents were from Fukuoka-ken, [which is in the] western part of Japan. My father was in the next mura,

the next area from where my mother was. The whole area today is one big city called Kitakyushu. So that's all I can say about my parents, for both have passed away. My dad was 94 when he passed away in the year '78, and my mother was going to be 101 when she passed away in 1998.

Togami

Do you recall when your parents came from Japan to the United States?

Harry Honda

Do I recall? Well, the family history shows that my dad came in the late-1890s to San Francisco, and he spent one or two years up in Alaska in a cannery. And my mother came in 1918. It so happened that my dad was fortunate enough to have enough funds to go back to Japan to get married, and they came back together. I take it back. They did not come back together. My mother had some eye problems so she was detained at Yokohoma until the eye condition was cleared up. She came the following year in late-1918.

Togami

Do you know, when you say that she was detained— ?

Harry Honda

And yes and by that time, they were all in Los Angeles, and that's where I was born.

Togami

What were your father and mother like?

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Harry Honda

Very quiet, hard working gentleman. I think he was the third son in the family. He had an older brother who was a very successful nurseryman in Los Angeles. My mother was the youngest of them. I think there are four or five. I don't remember now, but four or five children in that family. She was the youngest. That's about all I can say.

The thing about recalling family history is that I didn't have the opportunity to really get to know that. Because one of the best ways to get know family was during the camp years when the kids were able to talk to their parents day in and day out. And that's how children were able to understand what it was like when their parents were growing up. In my case, I was already in the service, so I missed all of that.

Togami

You have mentioned before that you had sisters. How many sisters did you have and did you have any brothers?

Harry Honda

Just two sisters. Kayoko, the youngest one, passed away 25 years ago in Chicago, and the other sister, Fusako, resides in L.A. So there were just three of us kids in the family.

Togami

So you were the only male child in the family?

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Do you remember your grandparents at all?

Harry Honda

None whatsoever.

Togami

Not at all? Did your parents first settle in the Temple and Figueroa area of Los Angeles, or elsewhere?

Harry Honda

When they came to Los Angeles, it was basically in the same area where we were before— in the Temple Street area.

Togami

And what was that area like? You mentioned in the previous interview that it was ethnically diverse.

Harry Honda

It was a very, very mixed neighborhood in the 1920s. There were Japanese families, Korean families, Chinese families, and a number of Jewish families. The area, at one time, was solid Jewish, a solid Jewish community with three synagogues within a four-block square. So you can see how thoroughly Jewish it was until the 1920s when they started to move to Brooklyn Avenue

and out to Fairfax.

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So when they moved out— other minority families, the Chinese, Japanese, the Korean— Asians anyway, were able to move in. Towards the 1930s, Temple and Figueroa at that time had several restaurants, barbershops, and bars that also catered to the Filipino community. Some were calling it Little Manila. It's a term I haven't seen there in many, many years, but that's what it was called back in the '30s.

Togami

So, because it was called Little Manila— then ethnic group-wise— it was more numerously Filipino then?

Harry Honda

Yes. Yeah, I should also mention there are a number of Mexican families as well. So, we had a very— well I should say, a friendly neighborhood with all the different people.

Togami

So you played with these children?

Harry Honda

Yes! We all played together, yes.

Togami

Predominantly what were families doing occupation-wise in that area— looking at the different groups?

Harry Honda

[There were] mom and pop stores, dry-cleaning, barbershop, chop suey house, or restaurant. My dad was a shoe repairman. Let's see what else did they have? One Chinese family sold herbs. I think a lot of the women were working in garment factories at that time. Some were running a hotel or an apartment. So it was kind of a small, real small community with a little bit of everything.

We also had a number of Caucasians and one— now that I think back happened to be— [he had] come from Scotland, and he was a milkman. Of course, milk people, [those] who delivered milk were all through by noontime. So he would be home around noon and he would drag out and play his bagpipe to keep in practice. (laughter) So you can see the neighborhood was not really all minority. (laughs)

Togami

Well, it's quite a difference then from, let's say, Little Tokyo, at the time—

Harry Honda

Oh, definitely, definitely!

Togami

Sort of like stepping into a different world.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

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Togami

Do you have any significant memories of living in that area?

Harry Honda

To this day, I remember playing with Bruce Kaji,

who was still a young [at the time]— maybe about 10 years younger than I was. And Colonel Young Kim — his family ran a grocery store a block away from where my father had his shop. There were a number of other Nisei who were in the neighborhood. There was another Chinese family. Their son, Henry, was a year ahead of me in high school, and his oldest sister happened to be Anna May Wong of Hollywood fame, a silent movie star.

Togami

I never heard of Anna May Wong.

Harry Honda

Well, she was a silent movie star [many years ago], so we're talking about— what 60, 70 years ago.

Togami

So you'll permit me that, then? (laughter) I wanted to move on if possible, to talk about the postwar years.

Harry Honda

Okay.

Togami

First off, Chicago. I'm interested in your impressions of Chicago during the postwar period. I wanted to find out, first off, when did your sister leave Rohwer, Arkansas to go to Chicago? This is your youngest sister?

Harry Honda

Yeah. My younger sister, Kayoko "Tonie" had already— was already married and living in Chicago when I was discharged from the service in December '45. Chicago at that time must have been the center for evacuees out of the camps because the camps were being closed towards the tail end of '45.

So all of my friends that I knew before the war had resettled in the Chicago area finding all kinds of odd jobs. And in my case I didn't— I wasn't looking for work, I was just trying to catch up with friends. So Chicago at that time was a place for— for me anyway— to get acquainted with the gang that I hadn't seen in three or four years.

And then the opportunity came within a half a year later for me to drive a car back to L.A. So I thought, well that would be a good way of seeing my folks who were in

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L.A. at that time. So I had another fellow, two of us we drove to Los Angeles by way of a stopover in Denver. This is in March of '46.

Harry Honda

At that time the JACL was having its first postwar national convention in Denver. And it just so happened that I had a chance to meet a lot of other people in Denver— people that I knew before the war. So I spent a week in Denver, staying with some friends there. But Chicago perhaps was the closest thing to First and San Pedro after the camps closed. I wrote about it in the resettlement issue of the Nikkei—I forgot what they called the magazine.

Togami

Was it the Nanka Nikkei Voices?

Harry Honda

Yeah, Nanka Nikkei that's what it was. I talked about what Clark and Division

was like at that time which was like First and San Pedro I might say. There were a lot of little dives, restaurants, offices. It was a very busy place. And there were also a couple of churches in the area where after the services, they would gather at Clark and Division.

Togami

Now did your sister initially go to Chicago to find— to seek employment or— ?

Harry Honda

Well, now when did she leave camp, in '44? Yeah, I think she left in '44. She got out of high school in '43, so in '44 she was in Chicago. I don't recall exactly what she was doing in Chicago, but she wound up as a secretary for Chicago Boys Club, one of the bigger social institutions in Chicago. So she was there until she passed away in Chicago.

And her husband, Mitsuo Kodama— she had married before he had left for overseas. But when they came back— when he came back, I should say, he found himself a job with General Mailing Company, which was a company that was founded by a Nisei who handled mailing of different products: flyers, books, little things like that. It turned out to be a big operation— as the war— as business picked up. Later he worked with another firm until retirement.

Togami

Did this operation employ a lot of other Nisei— ?

Harry Honda

I have no idea how many they were, but it was— all I can recall is that it was a big operation, yeah.

Togami

Why did your parents not join your sister in Chicago?

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Harry Honda

Why? Well I think, you know, Issei , they were in camp until the place closed in October '45. When the camps closed they were given the opportunity to get back at government expense. Otherwise, if— say they wanted to go to Chicago, it would be at their own expense, plus $25. You can't get very far from Arkansas to Chicago on 25 bucks. Anybody that was in Rohwer— most of them had come out from Stockton or Los Angeles were able to take the train back at government expense either to Los Angeles or to Stockton.

Togami

You said that you had friends in Chicago. What were your friends doing there?

Harry Honda

Some of them had accounting jobs with the industries in Illinois. I remember my friend used to work for International Harvester, which made farm equipment. He was there until he retired 30 years later, in the '70s. Some of the others were working for different companies, clerical or— I know there were a couple of barbers. I really don't recall what some of the other people were doing. Many women were in the clerical field.

Togami

Generally speaking, do you think that they were doing better economically?

Harry Honda

Well, I think, in Chicago— I think the situation was much better than the unknown factor of going back to Little Tokyo. If you stop and consider that they are only making $16 or $19 a month in camp and then they get out of camp and they've got themselves a halfway decent job. Of course, during the war years, during the manpower shortage, the Nisei had all kinds of opportunities to get the kind of job that they would never expect to have back on the [West] Coast.

Chicago was one of the best reasons why so many stayed. Stayed there for the rest of their lives until they retired. And I guess the only reason why they retired and came back to the West Coast is because of the weather. Anyone who has lived out in the West Coast can spend 30, 40 winters in Chicago but, if they can afford to or want to, they'll come back to the West Coast where they don't have to fight the weather.

Togami

I always think that having been born and raised in southern California, I probably am much more critical about the weather, especially when I go elsewhere in the country.

Harry Honda

Very true.

Togami

So did most of these friends of yours in Chicago end up staying, even though you had left?

Harry Honda

Did they end up where?

Togami

End up staying in Chicago?

Harry Honda

Yeah, I would say more than half of my friends stayed in Chicago until they retired and then came west.

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Togami

During your brief stay in Chicago, where did you live, did you live on the North Side or the South Side?

Harry Honda

They called it the Near North Side. I was three blocks away from Clark and Division, which was the center of the Japanese— the Japanese gang, you might say, from the camps.

Togami

Now I heard that a lot of the housing in that area was typically run down, often in transitional areas between whites and African Americans. How did the hostel you were in compare with other hostels, or housing in the area?

Harry Honda

It was like a hostel. It was a brick, three-, four-story structure and it was on a good street, La Salle, which is one of the main thoroughfares of Chicago, no streetcars. Most of the streets that had streetcars would be run down because of traffic and noise. I guess on the streets the rails probably didn't help in keeping the road nice and smooth.

Togami

There is a sense of vastness about Chicago that I wonder if it could have really compared to Los Angeles during that time. Did you feel that kind of difference when you were there?

Harry Honda

Well, I think being there for only a half a year, you know, I really didn't get to know Chicago other than as far as the subways would go. Not too many people had cars to begin with. Chicago is still basically maybe 10 miles north and south and about four miles from the lake west, so it doesn't compare with what L.A., has area-wise.

In L.A., you needed a car to get around, whereas in Chicago you can get by with riding the buses, streetcar, the elevated [trains].

It's a lot more compact— it's just like people living in New York.

Togami

Sort of a different city mentality.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

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Togami

So when you took these subways and buses around Chicago, what areas did you typically visit?

Harry Honda

Well, most of my friends at that time were— there were a few out in the South Side where the University of Chicago is and there were some— quite a few where I was in the near North Side. Now further north there was maybe a few, very, very few.

In fact, I would say that most of the evacuees are people who resettled in Chicago on the South Side. And it was after— much later, maybe in the '50s, when they started to move to the north, because the South Side at that time was slowly becoming black.

Togami

Is this the Hyde Park-Kenwood area?

Harry Honda

Yes.

Togami

Back to your stay at the hostel, I understand that it was owned by the Catholic Youth Organization. Was the rent there pretty reasonable?

Harry Honda

It must have been because I stayed there for a half a year. At that time, I was collecting $20 a week from the Veterans Administration. They allowed that for veterans who were not working. $20 a week and it was good for one whole year. If you didn't have a job after one year, you were a sad case and they would write you off.

Togami

So the clock was ticking?

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Did the hostels serve meals, or did you have them elsewhere?

Harry Honda

Yes! We had an Issei lady who fed us breakfast and supper. So it was very comfortable living in that type of an environment. Of course we had friends come over and join us for supper.

Togami

She would cook for your friends too?

Harry Honda

Yeah, we were able to— we had a very comfortable life in Chicago. I had no bad feelings about the place.

Togami

It sounds like, in your living accommodations, you were very fortunate in the accommodations you had. There were, from what I hear, lots of housing shortage problems that people had to deal with. But you didn't see any of that?

Harry Honda

Yeah, but not in my case, no. Yeah, I was lucky I would say.

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Togami

You mentioned that you were looking for a newspaper job in Chicago, or that's what I understood.

Harry Honda

Well, yeah the whole idea at that time was— after I take the car back to California I was planning to return [to Chicago]. Togo Tanaka, who I knew before the war was there [in Chicago]. At that time, he was running a correspondence school operation [American School].

He was also talking about starting up a monthly newsmagazine.

So I was going to help work with him on that, that's what I had in mind to do. But it was still in the planning stages at that time. Now he did get that magazine off, it was called Scene. Must have been there for at least 10 years or so.

Togami

What types of stories or— ?

Harry Honda

Well, they were basically human-interest stories. If you remember Life Magazine, it was that kind of format, although not as large, but [it contained] pictures and stories about individuals. And they had, maybe— I would say, maybe eight pages of copy in Japanese. [In fact,] there were still a lot of Japanese-speaking resettlers in the Chicago area, so naturally they had magazines that were for both kinds of readers.

Togami

Is that why you wanted to do a pictorial essay? I think I read that in your article in Nanka Nikkei Voices.

Harry Honda

Yeah; that was part of that same magazine idea. We didn't know what to call it at that time and I had it in mind, talking it over with Mr. Tanaka. He was doing well with his correspondence school for education.

Togami

I understand also at that time, about late-1945, the Chicago Shimpo was just sort of starting out. Did you know about that?

Harry Honda

No, I didn't— to be honest with you, I didn't know that it existed. Only time I became aware of that paper was after I came back to the West Coast. Louise Suski

who used to be the English editor of the Rafu Shimpo, whom I knew, was also working for the General Mailing Company.

She often said that she was helping put out one page of English as a public service. She wasn't getting paid and she liked to just keep her hands in what was happening in the Nisei community. So she was helping out until they finally— I don't know

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when she left Chicago Shimpo—I have no idea when she left, but eventually they had other people come on staff and take over the publication.

Togami

I think we talked quite a bit about Chicago here. I wanted to move on, and talk about this road trip you took from Chicago. This is the road trip that eventually brought you back to Los Angeles.

Harry Honda

Well that was a trip that where I was asked to drive a car back, it was a Chevrolet coupe back— to Los Angeles. That trip— I have to look at a map, but we went from Chicago to Omaha, Nebraska, and visited Boys Town. I had some friends there. Pat Okura was one of them.

From Omaha we went to Cheyenne, Wyoming where I had— where I was stationed for a couple of months. And I met some of my Japanese friends in Cheyenne. Then we drove down to Denver, Colorado where the JACL convention was. From Denver, we went down to Santa Fe, New Mexico, and took Route 66 back to California.

And I had told my mother that I was bringing a car back, and then I'll visit and go back to Chicago. That's what I had in mind to do. As I wrote in the article [in Nanka Nikkei Voices], as soon as I was crossing the Colorado River at Needles, all thoughts of going back to Chicago just faded away.

It was March of '46. The weather must have been nice. When I got back home to L.A., the first thing I told my mom was, "I'm going to stay. I'm not going back to Chicago." So she was very happy to hear that. A couple of months later, I signed up on the GI bill to go to Loyola. So that took care of whatever plans I had for Chicago. They just got dropped out when I was crossing the Colorado.

Togami

It was good thing you were crossing Needles in the spring, your life choices may have been different had you traveled in the summer. (laughs)

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Did you encounter any problems with discrimination during your road trip?

Harry Honda

No, I don't recall any problems. The car must have been about— what, four years old? So it was in fairly good shape. Yeah, I think the— only thing I can remember is we stopped off for gas here and there. So I had no trouble, no problems, at all, driving the car back. I always had a second driver to take over so it was good.

Togami

Did you have any humorous moments during that trip?

Harry Honda

I don't recall any of that.

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Togami

Now you said you stopped in Denver to attend the first postwar JACL convention and I understand you were there as a booster?

Harry Honda

Yes.

Togami

What was your experience at the convention? What was it like?

Harry Honda

Being a veteran at the time, I placed myself on the Veterans Affairs Committee where I met people like Ben Kuroki

and George Inagaki. There was a fellow by the name of Joe Saito, and I got to know him very well. He was from Ontario, Oregon. You know, I can go down the list of others who served on that committee.

These were friends that I kept all through the years because of JACL. Denver, at the time, had enough snow on the mountains for skiing purposes, so my friend in Denver said, "Harry, let's go skiing." I said, "No way!" (laughter) I'm just good enough to be on roller skates let alone skis. Well, it was chance also for me to get acquainted with Mari Sabusawa, who later married Jim Michener.

And I remember a couple of nights she would be sitting in the middle of the two of us— and we would be talking about Nisei problems. And for the sake of argument we would say, why we shouldn't join JACL. And of course she was very upbeat about the importance of Nisei becoming part of the JACL picture, with its big program of evacuation claims, citizenship for the Issei, getting rid of the Japanese Exclusion Act,

restoring yen deposits.

There were people who had their money in the Japanese banks and their assets were frozen because of the war. Then the banks said they would pay depositors back in yen. Of course, before the war the yen was fifty cents to a dollar, but after the war was over, it took 360 yen to make $1.00 so, it was down to nothing. So JACL was trying to help those depositors, and by negotiation, they were able to raise it up to 10-to-one, rather than 360-to-one.

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There were all kinds of interesting projects going on. We didn't call it redress, but we called it reparations. Some said, and I was among them— that it would take another evacuation to set a precedent, a legal precedent for getting the government to pay.

The first time around was because of losses due to the war. But the second time around, if they would intern people because of their race, whether there was a war or not, we thought it was the better way of approaching the government to get some sort of reparation. We didn't know how much to ask for. But the whole idea of some type of reparations was even discussed in '46.

And of course, JACL really didn't get around to it until 1970, when they became very serious about asking for reparations. By that time the evacuation claims had been taken cared of, citizenship, immigration, and some of the other problems, Alien Land Law, Issei being allowed to work as fisherman, et cetera. It finally came down to this is one big problem that JACL could be involved in.

Togami

Now some of those issues that you discussed— there are quite a few issues. How was the convention able to focus their efforts in dealing with some of those problems?

Harry Honda

Well, the most important ones— the priority was for citizenship for Issei. And, at the same time, making it possible for reopening immigration. Now Japan only was allowed a hundred— about 150 immigrants per year as compared to 10,000, 15,000 from England, unlimited numbers from Canada and Mexico. Of course all that changed in 1965.

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Harry Honda

Japan and China and the other Asian countries had a token number of immigrants to emigrate to the U.S.

Kim

[Sojin Kim, videographer] I have one question. You said that you would argue reasons why not to join the JACL. What are some of the arguments that you made?

Harry Honda

The what?

Kim

You had said that for the sake argument you would—

Harry Honda

Well, the thing was, you know, I would argue for why I shouldn't become a JACL member, and Mari Sabusawa would talk about why you should be a member because of all this litigation. We didn't resolve anything; we just kept talking. It was a discussion. Of course the outcome was that the two of us on the outside, became very involved in JACL. (laughs)

Kim

What were your points of argument against joining?

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Harry Honda

I can't recall them now, but I would think that individual needs had to be taken cared of. In my case, looking for a job. The other guy I was with was going back to school. They're the kind of things that would take away from whatever free time a person would have to work in any kind of organization. But it was basically for the sake of argument just to get Mari mad or to get her more vocal or whatever it was, you know.

Togami

So you played devil's advocate?

Harry Honda

Yeah. In fact we were able to repeat, not the arguments, but we were able to get together when Denver had its national convention in ninety— I'd say '94. They had another convention so, there's almost fifty years. So I said, "Mari, we ought to get together. So we did get together. (laughs) Of course by that time, she was married to Jim Michener so she was— so treated us to a nice luncheon. (laughter)

Togami

Was the convention heavily attended? Were there many people?

Harry Honda

I would say about 300 people there at that time. I can't say that it was heavily attended but for the first postwar convention it wasn't bad, from the standpoint of gathering people together.

There is still a lot of sentiment in the Nisei community about how JACL sold them down the river, so to speak. Some bad feelings about JACL so far as war time activities. Denver at that time was like Chicago. There was a lot of— a lot of Japanese from all over. I'm sure there were more Nisei from outside of Denver living at the time, yeah.

Togami

Well, it sounds like Denver was the first area that filled up before Chicago—

Harry Honda

Very true, right.

Togami

Well, do you think that the convention was not as heavily attended because people were still logistically trying to pull themselves together?

Harry Honda

No, I don't think so. I can't think of any. JACL conventions— they were more for conducting business. Of course, they did have the Sayonara banquet and the dance, which probably had more than 300 people. Overall I would say about 300 people at the convention.

Togami

So it dealt more with certain platform issues, then?

Harry Honda

Yeah, right. Yeah.

Togami

Were there certain JACL chapters that you noticed that had attended the convention?

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Harry Honda

Yeah, what?

Togami

Were there certain JACL regional chapters that were represented at the convention?

Harry Honda

I don't recall any specific chapters. The only thing I can remember about a convention would be the individuals— irrespective of the chapters. And it's like that even to this day. A chapter could have [as many as] 10 to 15 present, but only two people could vote. So they were the ones that stood out on a national council floor.

And when it comes to lobbying there are particular point of views. They're the ones that approached different chapter delegates. The rest of us sit in and listen and socialize, perhaps. So the business of JACL convention was basically the delegates from the different chapters.

JACL at that time had no more than 50 chapters, and I would say that of the 50, maybe 10 chapters were proxy. So you had 40 to 50 people debating issues. The rest of us would be sitting in the back listening to what was going on. And as always there were things on the outside of the convention room. You could be chit-chatting away catching up, but it was the first convention. It was a chance for people to get acquainted, make new friends in '46.

Togami

Well from there after making a number of side trips, you went through Needles, crossed the Colorado River, and decided to stay in Los Angeles. What was postwar Los Angeles like when you first saw it?

Harry Honda

It was starting to change, because in '44, I was able to pass through L.A., on my way to Manzanar. Of course at that time, Little Tokyo was known as Bronzeville. The African-Americans from the Deep South had occupied Little Tokyo. But when I came back in middle of '46, early-'46, it started to change. S.K. Uyeda's the ten cents store was the first Japanese business in town.

Togami

But he wasn't native to Los Angeles, in Los Angeles— ?

Harry Honda

No, as I recall he was from San Francisco before the war. And I have to say this about the Japanese Issei that started up business in Little Tokyo. They were from out of town. Of those who were in business in '46, not all of them came back. Probably some had retired or passed away. Perhaps some didn't want to have to get back on their feet in L.A. I mean— I guess it was such a traumatic experience being kicked out, that they didn't want to come to L.A.

So Mr. Uyeda was from San Francisco. Mr. Takahashi was one of the Issei commercial fishermen, who was [by then] too old to go back to sea. He opened up Nisei Bowl, which was a coffee shop, fast food kind of place on South San Pedro Street. It was a hang out for the Nisei. So you had a lot of small restaurants.

There was a drugstore on First and San Pedro called Iwaki. It's no longer called Iwaki, but it was called Civic Cut Rate Drug Store. Anyway the owner was from

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Santa Maria. He opened up the corner drugstore and pharmacy. So this was an example of another guy from out of town.

I suppose if you looked at a 1945 telephone book, and looked at the names, perhaps you could spot the few who were here before the war. But there would be a lot of names you wouldn't recognize, unless they were Issei leaders like Mr. Katsuma Mukaeda and Mr. Gongoro Nakamura,

Mr. Sei Fujii of Kashu Mainichi, and Mr. H.T. Komai of the Rafu Shimpo.

Those people came back because they had an office where they could resume their work in the community. But some of the others started out again because their sons wanted to get back into business. Now like Asahi Shoe Store— if it wasn't for his son taking over, I don't think Mr. Shimizu, the old man would bother to reopen the operation.

A good friend of mine, Vincent Uyeda, ran Moon Fish before the war. There were already two other fish markets, Granada Fish and Modern Fish, in town. So he went out to Jefferson Boulevard, near Third Avenue, to reopen Moon Fish in the southwest part of town. I guess Toyo Miyatake,

the photographer, was probably the best known. He started again from where he left off.

I'm trying to think of some of the others— The Nakajimas of Empire Printing, the Hashimotos of Mikawaya. There were a few doctors that came back and reopened the Japanese Hospital,

which was in Boyle Heights. Dr. James Goto and Dr. Masako Kusayanagi were Nisei doctors. The Issei doctors included Dr. Kikuwo

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Tashiro, Dr. D. Kuroiwa, Dr. Ichioka, Dr. Paul Ito, Dr. M. Murase, Dr. Isami Sekiyama, and Dr. Kyoichi Isawa.

Togami

Well, do you think that, in some respects, because the Nisei were there, it allowed for the proliferation of Issei businesses in Little Tokyo? Was the presence of the Nisei there important for the Issei to open businesses?

Harry Honda

Yeah, I think that the father-son combination was a good one, you know, like Toyo Miyatake. His son, number one Archie, was the right hand man, you might say. Archie did all the running around. Toyo-san was able to sit in his studio, take pictures, and retouch the films. Another [father-son combination] was Fukui Mortuary.

We had some of the guys who were— who came over from Hawai'i before the war. They were working at the wholesale market. Then they went to camp where they met lot of L.A. people, so they resettled in L.A. And they got into other areas of work— insurance people, accountants. Most of the friends I knew from Hawai'i were in that area as service people. One was the late Kiyo Yamato, who revived the Nisei Week Festival in 1949.

Togami

After the war, your parents left Rohwer and settled in the Bunker Hill area of Los Angeles. What was that neighborhood like and were there many Japanese there?

Harry Honda

There were a lot of two-story homes, apartments, you might say. And I would say the Asian population was no more than ten percent. The only reason why we went back to that area was because we lived in that area before the war. The others who lived here, went back to Boyle Heights, or they went to the west side of town— West LA.

Some went down to Gardena.

There were so few of us [left from] before the war. I would say, it was the people who grew up in the area, [who actually] returned to the Bunker Hill area. But it was a temporary thing because the houses were old. If you had a shop, or you wanted a business elsewhere, you would naturally move to where your businesses were. Like in our case, my dad was a shoe repairman in the Bunker Hill area before the war. But by that time, the Bunker Hill area had become part of Civic Center.

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Many of the houses were being torn down to make room for county buildings. So the vendors that took care of my dad's business— leather, rubber heels, shoe repair equipment, had found a store, or a shop rather, out at Vernon and Figueroa, south of the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. So we moved out to a house, which was maybe three blocks away from the shop. We started to purchase the house.

The guy who took care of the real estate happened to be the first black assemblyman elected to Sacramento, Augustus Hawkins. Then [from assemblyman] he went from there to Washington, D.C. I would say that maybe after five years or so, we had to move out because the Harbor Freeway [Interstate Highway 110] was coming through. And so [because redevelopment] we got evacuated again.

I must say, even before the war, when my dad had his shop in the Temple and Figueroa area, we had a house halfway up the hill, north of Temple Street, which eventually was cleared away to make room for the four-level interchange.

(laughter)

So had evacuation not taken place, the Honda family would still have been evacuated. (laughter) So in our case we've been evacuated three times. Because— twice because of the freeways. From the Figueroa-Vernon area we moved further west, towards 39^th and Arlington, a good three to four west miles west. Not quite Leimert Park.

By that time, my dad decided to retire. He didn't want to go back. He said the shop was too far away for him to go, so he just gave up. He did all of his nail-pounding in the yard.

Togami

Well, obviously because of changes happening in postwar L.A., it sounds as if you moved a lot. But was the mobility of moving from place to place also because it was easier for Japanese Americans by then?

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Harry Honda

You know, it's hard to say that, because I don't think it was that hard. I mean those who grew up on a farm before the war, naturally couldn't go back. I mean farmland was being redeveloped into suburban housing. So it all depends on where you found a job.

The Issei tried to live as close as possible to their place of work. I'm sure a lot of people have stayed in one place until the house got too small, and [then] the family started to grow and they would move out. It would be very interesting to find out how often the Nisei families moved after they came back.

Togami

In what areas of Los Angeles did you know that Japanese American families were living besides, let's say, Little Tokyo?

Harry Honda

Well, you know, Boyle Heights. They were there through, I would say, the 1970s. The kids, who grew up in Boyle Heights, after they got out of college, would probably move out to wherever their jobs took them. The southwest part of town [Seinan District] was also a thriving area. Again it was basically an Issei area. So once the Nisei got out of college, they would move out.

West L.A. was another popular place, also the San Fernando— San Fernando Valley.

Those in Boyle Heights— a lot of them went to Monterey Park in the late-'50s.

It would be very interesting to get a map, a census map, perhaps, to see where Japanese concentration or even [what] Asian concentrations existed every ten years. You could see the shift in population. It was basically because of growing families. Neighborhoods with good schools attracted them to certain areas.

Togami

Looking at housing characteristics were certain areas different from others, let's say Boyle Heights as compared to the southwest?

Harry Honda

Well, the houses were both about the same style, about the same age, because Boyle Heights, the southwest, uptown, and the east Hollywood area were all nice areas even before the war. But after the war they started to age, so Japanese and Asian families started to move out to West L.A., Monterey Park. Some of the other areas might be places like Gardena, and all the different places in the San Fernando Valley, like Pasadena

—

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Togami

When do you think you started seeing that move to the suburban fringes of the city?

Harry Honda

The what?

Togami

When do you think it was that these families started to move further away from the city of Los Angeles?

Harry Honda

I would say in the late-'50s and into the '60s. Before that they had been in LA for about 10 years, and by that time they would have had some idea where they wanted to move. There was tract housing starting to pop up. One of the areas was developed around the Holiday Bowl

on Crenshaw.

There were two streets built for specifically for the Nisei— Norton and Bronson, from Exposition to 39^th Street. So you had— you're talking about one, two, three— five, six blocks of housing. And some of them had a very distinct Oriental motif to them. I notice we still have Nisei families living in those places.

Togami

Were they typically younger families living in those places?

Harry Honda

Yeah, at that time, yes. Yes, because the houses were three-, four-bedroom types. There were apartments that leased two, three bedrooms.

Togami

I want to also talk about the job situation in Los Angeles at the time. Did you see any occupational changes in postwar Los Angeles, especially between 1946-'50? That period of time has been described as the boom years of Los Angeles. Had any of your friends done particularly well?

Harry Honda

You know the thing that stands out for that particular era was the women. They had already come with the reputation of being excellent secretaries. So there was always a demand for Nisei women in the secretarial field, whether it be school or city government, or even the private sector.

Gardening was also a lucrative field. Issei would be helping out their sons on the gardening route, or vice-versa. The thing about being a gardener is that you really needed no capital other than a pickup truck, and a couple of dollars to buy equipment, and then make the rounds. And if you did a good job, there's no problem in picking up accounts. Besides gardening and secretarial, the produce stands were not as hectic as before the war.

The Nisei who worked in the produce stands were recruited into unions. So the concept of joining unions started to take on. There were also many that went into civil service; there was always a big crew of Nisei in the post office. Some were

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able to get into another activity, but as I recall, there were more Nisei in post office work.

Togami

I think we actually have somebody, I think, from the San Diego region in the REgenerations Project who worked in the post office.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Now I understand that you worked for a while at the county assessor's office.

Harry Honda

Yeah that was before school started. (laughs) I got back from Chicago in March. And school didn't start till September. Naturally I applied for a clerical job with the County of Los Angeles. So they put me into the county assessor's office. I could see at that time, a lot of people were buying houses.

We would have to post the changes of the new owners of the houses and track them down by tracts. We had to go through big, big books [about 28 inches wide, 21 inches high, and one and one-half inches thick], to locate the tract by number. And a lot of paper work, yes. But that was just a temporary job for me until school started.

Togami

What was the application process like?

Harry Honda

Oh, I don't recall other than a routine filling out of some forms— if you passed whatever written test that there was, had a good handwriting, whatever. I didn't have any problems. It was not a dull job because it was something brand new; it was something I had never done before.

Togami

Did you see a lot of Nisei working in the assessor's office or various county offices at the time?

Harry Honda

Well, yeah there were quite a few. Yes. For a while, the county was looking for help, anyway. I suppose some of them were, like in my case, waiting for school to start in the fall. Working for the post office, was something else. It would take more training, and more skills were involved. It depended on your ability to sort out the mail real fast. You had to memorize all the different bins to see where your different slots were.

Togami

By looking at some of the county records that you had to examine on a daily basis, were you able to evidence whether a lot of Japanese American families moving to certain areas?

Harry Honda

No, I don't recall that at all, yeah.

Togami

We want to shift our topic of discussion and talk to you, now, if possible, about your college years. I understand that you enrolled at Loyola University in the fall of 1946 to study political science. Were your parents supportive in your choice of study?

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Harry Honda

Yes, they were. I think because the fact that I was on the GI bill, there were no expenses involved other than getting to and from school. I was fortunate in having fellows who lived north of me who picked me up. We would commute that way out to Westchester.

At the time, there was maybe a student body of about, I would say, 1,500 to 2,000. Most of them were veterans. We were the first large class of veterans— World War II veterans of '46. There were two other Nisei veterans in our class, Thomas Ishikawa and Tosh Kumamoto. So there were three of us altogether.

Togami

You were typically older than the other students were?

Harry Honda

Oh, the veterans were all maybe four or five years older than the typical freshmen out of high school. We had some of the guys— the veterans were as old as some of the instructors. So a lot of the time— I'll use this situation: the instructor would listen what to the students had to say about the war. (laughter) Yeah. I think, it being an all-boys school, there was a lot of horseplay— all in good fun, of course.

Those who were able to stay at the dorm probably had a lot more fun because we were commuting in and out. But I think the guys who stayed at the dorm were students who came from out of town, out of the country. We had two, three people from Asia, from China. Two classmates of mine were from the Panama Canal Zone, Phelan and Remedios, who spoke fluent Spanish. They would cuss up the professor in Spanish sometimes: what a dumbbell, or something like that.

Togami

Were you living at home?

Harry Honda

Yes, all the time! I was a commuter. From L.A. to Loyola, at that time, it must have been about 15 miles from the center of town? And it was very interesting. One Irish fellow, John Reilley— we were riding back and forth for what, a couple of years. This third guy, he says, "Harry, I thought for sure, in the two years that we're riding back and forth that a discussion would come up about the fact that John was prisoner of war. A Japanese prisoner of war." (laughs )

He thought that John would have made some nasty remarks or some unexpected remarks 'cuz I happened to be Japanese American, but it never came up, it never came up. I didn't know this until the third guy told me. So when we graduated together, he still didn't talk about the fact that he was a prisoner of war— the fact that we rode in and out of class together. We became fast friends.

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He wound up as a principal in the L.A. school district and became one of their administrators. I used to see him once in a while, like class reunions and that type. So we were good fast friends. And the other guys that used to ride together, we still keep in touch after 50 years. I'm looking forward to my 50^th anniversary next year in 2000. (laughs)

Togami

I often wonder how I've lost touch with all my high school friends. That's wonderful.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Well, you graduated from college in 1950?

Harry Honda

Yes.

Togami

Then you decided, at that point, that you wanted to go full-time into journalism?

Harry Honda

No, I was planning to study law because of political science. I did take one quarter of law school at Loyola Law School. I had passed the Scholastic Law Aptitude test. I had no problem with that, but I told the professor, I said I just can't hack memorizing all the pages, so I think I'd better drop.

So I dropped and then I went to work for this friend of mine who was from Chicago. He was the English editor, Mas Imon. He was the English editor of the Shin Nichibei [ New Japanese American News], which was then on Second Street in L.A. I was his assistant in 1950.

Then in 1952, the JACL decided to move the Pacific Citizen to Los Angeles. The editor, at that time, Larry Tajiri, didn't want to come back to L.A. 'cuz he liked the environment and all the other nice things about the Rocky Mountains. So he resigned.

The JACL National Council had determined that PC would come to L.A. So it came to L.A. without an editor. Mr. [Saburo] Kido, who was advising the publisher of the Shin Nichibei wanted to get the Pacific Citizen printed at that plant, the Shin Nichibei plant. And since I was already there, he asked me to be the editor.

So I had people like Kats Kunitsugu

help me out. Some of the other people that used to help out at the Shin Nichibei would help with delivering, and taking care of the circulation records, et cetera. I was able to get the paper off and running that October.

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[question not recorded]

Harry Honda

So I'm still here with the Pacific Citizen as editor emeritus.

Togami

That's a big responsibility to be offered. Did you feel that it was daunting in any way?

Harry Honda

Well, the nice thing about the Pacific Citizen—I knew Larry Tajiri from before the war. So he was able to guide me, tell me what to look for, the kind of stuff we should have, and try to keep up the format that he had. Since we are both from the old school, that names make news, we followed the system. So I've been very happy with the way things have turned out.

Togami

I guess, maybe, I should have asked you this earlier, but I'll go ahead and ask you now. Why did you want to be a journalist?

Harry Honda

Well that's very interesting. In the 11^th grade, before the war, if one passed B11 English, which was composition— and I passed it. In the second half of eleventh grade you had a choice. You could either take English lit, or American lit, or theatre, or any number of other courses, journalism being one of them.

And the guy that sat in front of me also had the option of taking whatever, because we both passed 11^th-grade English. And he said to me, "Journalism is an easy course!" So that's how come I got started and became involved with the newspaper. I was told it was an easy course.

Togami

Did you actually find it an easy course?

Harry Honda

I didn't flunk it, let's put it that way (laughter).

Togami

I remember I took a course in journalism in high school and we worked together. It was hectic, but very satisfying.

Harry Honda

Yes.

Togami

Do you think, back on the journalism route again. Do you think working for a smaller community newspaper allowed you a greater opportunity to assume more responsible tasks in news production and the newspaper production? Did you have other aspirations to work for bigger newspapers?

Harry Honda

In the '50s, journalism in the newspaper was still basically a white man proposition. So the Nisei vernaculars were able to attract people who liked to stay in the newspaper business. A number of them— it was said families that couldn't support a family on newspaper, Japanese newspaper pay. So I'm sure they went into other fields, you know working for government, or post office, or whatever.

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But in my case I was still single, and I liked to work, so I stayed with it. I think, the thing about being at the Pacific Citizen, unlike Rafu Shimpo was that I had the chance of meeting a lot of people from around the country as opposed to just around town. To me, getting around the country was a plus— just to go to cover a national convention. We went all over to wherever the convention might be, Chicago or San Francisco, Seattle, Portland. So I think from that standpoint the PC provides a world of contacts around the Japanese American community.

Today PC still is the house organ for JACL. It has expanded its focus to Asian American issues and that's where the paper is going— Asian American issues, and trying to report on events that seldom would make the national newspaper or the great metropolitan press, although it's starting to change. You see a lot of Asian bylines in the newspapers today, covering all sorts of events.

But still the Asian community newspapers continue covering some of the issues that we confront. So there is a need for Asian or ethnic newspapers, a weekly. Or it could be what I see now coming out on Internet— although I don't play with it. Young people more and more are not reading as much newspaper-wise, print media. But they'll go to the computer and find what they want— read what they want as opposed to flipping a lot of pages that they are not interested in.

Togami

What do you think of that personally? Do you consider yourself a print purist?

Harry Honda

I think myself being in the print media all my life. There's something about the print media that once it's printed, it stays. Whereas on the computer it's there, but you scroll the screen. If you want something you've got to scroll through text. So it depends on how you are raised, if you are satisfied with the little bit of information you can get from the monitor as opposed to print, so be it.

Togami

Well to me, nonprinted forms of information don't seem to have that sense of permanence. I don't know quite how to describe that but, when it's there, it's there. Whereas, for instance, when something is posted on the Internet, it could change quickly at any given time.

Harry Honda

Oh yes; it depends on what kind of information you are looking for, right? If you are looking for news, it's on television. You might not get the full picture, but at least you have an idea of what's happening. I think anybody that is used to reading books, novels, newspapers should be no problem. I don't know.

But it seems to me that the print media is also a good avenue for advertising, otherwise, people like the Los Angeles Times wouldn't carry those full page ads in the paper, or even the Wall Street Journal. Some of these other— even USA Today has a lot of full page advertising on just one item or a couple of items. So there's something about some of the trash in the print media that will never be replaced by any other form of information.

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I don't think we'll ever see a day where we'll have a lot of newspapers in one community. But every big town would have at least one newspaper, big newspaper, which may be good or not good depending on your politics. But advertising-wise, people rely on print. I think, people are aware of the fact that we get a lot of junk mail, another form of print.

We're in that type of economy here in America. We're not at that barter system. Some would want to go— or I don't know how many— to a swap meet. Some people are happy looking for things at the swap meet. Or they'll go to Farmers Market, looking for whatever there is to eat rather than going to and stocking up at the supermarket.

Togami

If I can just push back a little bit, during the prewar period you wrote for both the Rafu Shimpo and also a publication called the Sangyo Nippo. With respects to the Sangyo Nippo, what kind of a paper was it? What it was its readership base?

Harry Honda

Sangyo Nippo was a morning newspaper. At that time in the late-'30s, there were three newspapers: two afternoon newspapers and one morning paper. Sangyo Nippo was a paper supported by farmers who would send their produce to the market. They wanted to know what the prices were at the wholesale market— what the tomatoes were being sold for, et cetera.

Whereas the afternoon papers, they would get the same information, but it would be in the paper the following day as opposed to Sangyo Nippo which was a morning paper. They both went out at noon, to get the prices— the quotes at the different commission houses.

Well the Rafu Shimpo and Kashu Mainichi, by the time they got back, their paper would be rolling out for the afternoon. And so the prices for the day would not be in that day. The Sangyo Nippo didn't start their day until three in the afternoon, so they were able to report the latest prices for the readers the following morning.

The Sangyo Nippo was basically a paper supported by farmers; therefore, it had a lot of stuff about farms, farm activity. Even a section, as I recall, had a lot of Japanese news stuff, because we had access to Japanese press items. In the late-thirties, Japan was at war with China. It was not emphasis, but at least they made the headlines. The main stories of the day would be the progress of the Japanese Army in China. (laughs)

Togami

So was it more sort of Issei , pro-Japanese— ?

Harry Honda

Well the English section was definitely Nisei , but the Japanese, I don't know, what they had 'cuz I don't read enough Nihongo [Japanese] to say which way. But it was basically a farmer's newspaper. I'm sure they had what was happening in the community. They probably had their fiction columns. I think the Japanese section was no different from what was in the Rafu or Kaishu Mainichi.

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And the Sangyo Nippo was actually— we had— before I got there, we had a fellow named Joe Oyama. He was the first English editor who started that paper. His sister is Molly Oyama [Mary Mittwer]

who wrote columns during the prewar in the San Francisco and L.A. papers called "Deirdre." She was very active in the community and very liberal-minded. She was for women's rights when they didn't call it that. She was always speaking for the young ladies. Gossip once in a while. During the postwar, her column that was printed in the Pacific Citizen was called "Smoglites."

Togami

Did she voice her political of views at all?

Harry Honda

Yeah, it all began together. Sangyo Nippo was also a paper that went to battle the Tokyo Club,

which was a gambling center for Little Tokyo. It so happened that Tokyo Club and a part of the Sangyo Nippo was being printed in the same building in Yamato Hall. And I don't know why, I think his name is Mr. Murai, who was a philosopher, but he always didn't say good things about Tokyo Club.

Now the other newspapers didn't say anything about Tokyo Club. Evidently, Tokyo Club had enough influence in the community so that Japanese newspapers would not speak ill of the operation. For one thing the Tokyo Club— on weekends the farmers would come in, eat, and gamble away whatever they had. Tokyo Club always made sure that they had enough money to get back home over the weekend.

Togami

They would gamble—

Harry Honda

They would gamble away their stuff, but they always had a ticket to get back on the red car, or whatever, to get taken back. It was like a soup kitchen during the day, during the week, I would say. The story goes that there were a lot of struggling Issei artists. Tokyo Club would always buy a painting, or whatever it was. So that was one way young Issei artists were able to survive.

Togami

Do you recall any of the artists?

Harry Honda

Hmm?

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Togami

Do you recall any of the artists?

Harry Honda

No, I don't recall who they were, but that's the way it was like in the late-thirties.

Togami

What type of gambling did they have at the Tokyo Club?

Harry Honda

I've never been upstairs so I can't tell you. But I imagine the typical Japanese Issei liked hana.

There must have been some bean games. I don't know if they had dice and stuff. You gotta go to someone who has been up there. (laughs)

Togami

Maybe, nobody would admit it. (laughs) Was it typically male?

Harry Honda

Yeah, I would say [it was] a men's club.

Togami

How long did that last?

Harry Honda

It never revived after the war.

Togami

So it was in operation until the evacuation?

Harry Honda

Yeah, until the evacuation, yes. If you read up on Little Tokyo history, you'll find out that the Tokyo Club, just like the Tokyo Club in Seattle, was started by a man who hated to see the Issei gamble away all their money at the Chinese places. You know the Chinese used to have these— like lotto, you might call it, where you scratch off and— like keno games in Las Vegas today.

They would have a morning run of numbers and one in the afternoon. And these guys would make their rounds of the shops and pick up the bets and they would come back in the afternoon and show them their receipts. If they won they'd pay them off. It was a good thing for the Issei. They like to gamble. So that's how come the Tokyo Clubs were developed, plus providing sustenance in-between, huh?

Togami

(laughs) I think I sidetracked a little bit because it was interesting.

Harry Honda

Yeah; that's not REgenerations, for sure.

Togami

No! (laughter) During your senior year in college it was mentioned in your first interview that you helped Saburo Kido at the New Japanese American News.

Harry Honda

Yes.

Togami

Was it similar to the Rafu Shimpo? How long did it last?

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Harry Honda

Well, all Japanese vernaculars were similar. The only difference would be the equipment. The Rafu Shimpo always did have a modern, not that modern, but a newspaper printing process for that. It was called a rotary press, whereas the other two papers were flatbed presses.

Now the rotary press is much faster in producing the paper, whereas the flatbed was, maybe, a lot slower I would say— I don't know how much slower— but the printing on the rotary press was clean, very legible. Whereas on the flatbed— because the flatbed would go back and forth over the print, over the type. It would wear out the type.

Japanese type on a flatbed— before the war anyway— would wear out over a period of time, so you couldn't— or it was very hard to read the worn out Japanese characters. Whereas the rotary press— what they did was they were able make a paper cast of the page— they call it stereotyping.

What they did with the paper cast, they were able to shape it, half-moon shape and pour hot metal lead into that, trim it, and put that on a press so that at least the Japanese characters wouldn't wear out as fast. And it was just that one roll over that type, you know. Whereas [for] the front-page on a flatbed— if it ran off 5,000 copies, you would be going back and forth, back and forth. It would wear out over a period of time.

So the Rafu Shimpo always did have an advantage in that it provided a very legible [newspaper] for the Issei. The Japanese characters can be very messy when they got worn down. You couldn't read it. So that's where the Rafu Shimpo had it over all the newspapers before the war.

Togami

So you think that people would have wanted to subscribe to a newspaper that they could read— ?

Harry Honda

Yeah, one that they could read, yes. Today we don't have that problem. Everybody's cold-type offset, so nobody has any problem really today.

Togami

Were there any differences in coverage between— ?

Harry Honda

I think the Rafu Shimpo was— since they had more people on staff, naturally they were able to cover more events. They may have had maybe two or three people covering a big event, some social event. Whereas the other paper, they had only one reporter, or nobody else for that matter. The Rafu was always the big paper, and still is today, by far, if you look at the Japanese section.

Togami

In also in your first interview, you talked about the large number of moves the PC made from one office to another.

Harry Honda

A what?

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Togami

A large number of moves from place to another for the PC. Was it because of space considerations that you moved so often?

Harry Honda

Yeah. Definitely, space plus the fact that we were growing. When we first started, we had three people. I had an office that was maybe half this size. Advertising was handled by the JACL regional director, who was in another separate room. And the person in charge of mailing was also doubling up as the regional office secretary, because at that time we had no more than, say, 2,000 subscribers. That was very easy to handle. And after 1960 when subscriptions doubled to about 6,000, it started to climb [another] maybe 1,000, 2,000 per year.

By the eighties, we were running close to 20,000. By that time we needed someone full-time just to take care of circulation and the mail. We needed another person to take care of bookkeeping. We needed another person to take care of advertising and try to get one or two people to help you out editorially. So because everybody would have a desk, we had to move.

When we decided to set type in-house in 1976, that meant we needed more space. We started setting our own type from about the mid-seventies, so that meant two more people. So every place we went, we just needed elbow room.

Togami

Now I understand that I think it was on your fourth move of the PC office, that you were in the Nishi Hongwanji temple in Little Tokyo. Do you remember what the condition of the building was like?

Harry Honda

Well, at that time the building was not the Nishi Hongwanji. They moved out in the '50s, I think it was the '50s, or '60s. City Hall wanted to widen the First Street, but there was a big battle to save the north side because it was the only thing left in the way of historic Little Tokyo.

So Nishi Hongwanji was then asked how would they— what plans did they have if ten feet was taken out off the front of the building? And the Nishi Hongwanji people said, "If we can get property in the back, we can stay there." The city said, "No we can't do that." So the Nishi Hongwanji decided to leave. They sold the property to the city.

In the meantime, while in this building we had a couple of little earthquakes come along. I'm still trying to recall what year it was. It must have been back there in the '60s when the CRA, Community Redevelopment Agency,

was making a survey of

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all the buildings that had to be removed by eminent domain to make room for Little Tokyo redevelopment.

There was an earthquake that rattled down Third Street, which had lot of industrial-type buildings. And it was so severe that windows were broken; a lot of bricks in the front fell off. So an earthquake must have saved the city some money in demolishing the brick buildings. I can't recall when that earthquake took place, but that was in the sixties sometime.

At that time, that earthquake shook Nishi Hongwanji to such a point that it was condemned, unfit for people to move in. We were at the Sun Building at that time. The Sun Building had to be torn down because it blocked the back door of the New Otani Hotel that was about to be completed.

All the tenants in the Sun Building raised hell and said, "Where can we go? This is perfect for us. We don't have to pay high rent." So the city said, "Well, you can move into the Hongwanji building at a dollar a year." Here we were paying $100, $200 a month. But the Nishi Hongwanji building had been condemned because of the earthquake. So we took our chances moving into that place.

And, in the meantime, JACCC [Japanese American Cultural and Community Center] was being built and that was a place that was going to be open for all the tenants of the Sun Building that were nonprofit agencies. JACCC was going to house non-profit, social, cultural groups— community groups. So while we were waiting for that place to get finished, we stayed in the Sun Building and then the Nishi Hongwanji building.

To show you how rickety the place was, every time the RTD bus came up First Street, from Alameda, and made that turn towards San Pedro, the building would shake. (laughter) We were there about three years and then we moved over. So the building was empty for maybe about five, six years and then the museum [Japanese American National Museum] took over.

Togami

Why did the PC office eventually move from Los Angeles to Monterey Park?

Harry Honda

Well, then it was a question of room. The other thing was our downtown PC office at Third and Alameda, in the Neptune Building, was burglarized twice. They took away the computers and trashed the office. Richard Suenaga, who was our editor at that time, said that with the holiday issue coming up, we've got to work at night. I was afraid that someone was going to come along and hit us over the head. Rather than wait for something like that to happen, we decided to move.

The person who was in charge of looking for another place to stay had two places— downtown by the original Pantry, in a high rise building, and this place [the Monterey Park site]. First one was over there on Coral Circle, half a block away. I said to Richard, "The rent might be a little cheaper for the first year if we are downtown, but it would be hard to justify PC being in a real nice place, nice part of

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the city, downtown, et cetera. (laughs) But we would have to pay parking, $10 a month, or whatever it was. But if we moved here [to Monterey Park], parking is provided. I think the rent structure [here] was more to what we allowed, budget-wise. It would meet our operations. So that's the reason why we moved here.

Togami

You moved here to Monterey Park in '92 or— ?

Harry Honda

Yeah, it was about '92, yes, that we moved from there to here.

Togami

Okay, I wanted to also touch a bit on the JACL, and their shift in emphasis during the postwar. In the 1950s, the JACL moved from being a service organization to more of a political, civil rights organization. Given how politics can be divisive and dicey, do you think that it's been difficult for JACL to continue to be activists?

Harry Honda

First of all, JACL unlike what it was like during the war years or right before the war, especially in the L.A. area, there were so many other organizations that were doing the kind of work that the JACL was involved in before the war. So it was only natural for JACL in L.A. to get involved with other organizations— going into issues more than before. Of course, there were more issues to get involved in after the war.

Whereas if you went, say, to a small community, some rural community where JACL is the only thing going for the Japanese community, there it would still be like it was before the war. Service, social, a little bit of politics, engaging in public relations work on behalf of the Japanese community overall.

The JACL in the rural areas was at least, an umbrella kind of group. If there was a Christian church or a Buddhist church in the community, the JACL would try to take care of both members. And it was a place where a lot of the Issei were able to gather once a year, twice a year, thanks to the Nisei who appreciated the fact that they were the pioneers. Today, of course, the Issei are gone, but I'm talking about say in the '50s.

The rural chapters had a much more— they were more community-conscious in trying to be helpful, as opposed to the urban chapter which was into issues— coalitions, perhaps, politics. It was that kind of broader education— getting involved in U.S -Japan title affairs, especially if a chapter had Kibei

active— people that could read what was in the Japanese press. So there were two different roles for JACL chapters, depending on where they were geographically.

Today we not only have geographic, but we have the age factors, along with mixed marriage factors. So JACL is— while it can't be all things to all people, at least depending on the leadership, the chapters will go where the leaders will take them. It seems to me that some chapters have strong leaders and others don't. So I'm happy

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that we have some real dedicated, strong leaders who are willing to train others to follow.

I think one of the best signs of a strong chapter would be to look at the holiday issue. The holiday issue contains 120 pages of ads and stories and pictures. And the chapters that have a lot of ads show just how well organized they are in the community. Some of the people that have been helping us out year after year are the kind of people that would be doing the same kind of thing for other organizations as the need arises.

Togami

Having said that, how does an organization like the JACL and the Pacific Citizen as its printed voice deal with that kind of vast diversity of issues? Pretty much the same way?

Harry Honda

Are you talking about the future?

Togami

No, no, the sort of varied, different things. You were just saying that JACL can't be everything to everybody.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

Would you say that would be the same, in terms of the paper too?

Harry Honda

I think it depends on leadership. Some leaders have a certain agenda, and it is easy for them to pursue that agenda. I think that's the way to go now. And hopefully they can attract enough followers so that they can push the program through. So there are a lot of human factors in place.

Some people will make use of a chapter for personal gain— to get themselves well known in the community and score their so-called brownie points by service. And JACL has been around enough years now so that within the overall community, at least they know what JACL stands for, what it tries to do. And if they don't, at least it is real simple to— for a member to explain what's in store for the community from the standpoint of a JACL perspective.

Togami

With respect to looking at history, I think that at many times, certainly decades are characterized by the news events that are within it. We already know that the 1940s were a time of great disruption and hardship for Japanese Americans. Based on the stories covered in the PC, how would you characterize the '50s, '60s, '70s and '80s?

Harry Honda

Well, in the '50s, the passage of Walter-McCarran Act was one of the big projects for JACL right after the war. It meant citizenship for the Issei, repeal of the Immigration Exclusion Act, and evacuation claims. There weren't too many, what I would say, overall issues, that would excite a lot of people after that. So the leaders of the late-'50s and '60s were trying to keep the organization together, as if waiting for something to happen.

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So you had things like scholarship come along to fill up part of the program here. And scholarship was a big thing. Of course the families were growing up. I mean your kids were growing up, and are still thriving today. Some of the other things would be youth programs.

For a while there was an effort to send your kids, Sansei kids, to Washington, D.C., for a leadership conference for one week. There they would meet some of the Japanese Americans who were in office, Congress, and make the rounds of the different federal offices, as well as sightsee around the Washington, D.C. area.

The young kids would come back with a good sense of what makes Washington tick and help broaden their horizons, other than looking for a job here on the West Coast. They could find something back east. By the '60s, JACL had strong chapters back east as well as here. So you saw Sansei who grew up back east. They wanted to come out to the West Coast.

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[question not recorded]

Harry Honda

So we had some very interesting youth conferences in the Midwest and the intermountain group. That happened to be the kind of midway point for students and junior JACLers to get together. Rather than having someone from back east paying a big fat travel fee to come west, they would meet them halfway in Salt Lake City. So the youth conferences were interesting in that respect, by meeting midway.

Now with so many youth on the West Coast and the leadership being on the West Coast, the youth conferences are being held in Southern California. And I think maybe the youngsters from the Midwest and back east don't mind coming out to the West Coast 'cuz it appears this is where all the action is taking place. But I still think it's important for West Coast Sansei to get into the Midwest and Intermountain areas to see what it's like to be in a community where you are the only Asian face in the crowd, as opposed to Southern California.

Togami

It seems to be increasingly more difficult to do.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

So those types of events were pretty much reported in the PC?

Harry Honda

Yeah. And by the time the '70s came around, we had aging problems. The word "gerontology" was being kicked around a lot. And they were not talking about aging Issei , but they were talking about aging Nisei in the seventies. So programs started to pop up on what to do in retirement, and some of the JACL chapters were into building retirement homes. Travel programs became popular. And to this day you see a number of travel agencies advertise in the PC all of their different tours that are available for the year.

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Then you have— nowadays you still have Nikkei singles programs, we have the hapa

issues. So the programs dealt with, other than hate crimes, as we call them today. Race discrimination will be around for a long time, I think, and these were things that were happening before the war. In another L.A. program, the whole idea was keeping the community together somehow.

Perhaps, a very interesting prospect for what JACL can do in the years to come is that if there are enough Sansei leaders in JACL around who want to maintain this Asian community, they can offer workshops. Workshops and workshops with teachers to make sure that the Japanese American story will not be forgotten. I think the other thing would be, maybe it's not for the JACL to do, but emphasize the importance of cultural heritage.

And in another case, for the last 10 years, I've been promoting getting to know the Nikkei in South America and Canada. We have this organization called Pan American Nikkei Association, and they meet every odd numbered year. This year, in 1999, it's going to be held in Santiago, Chile. It's good to meet Nikkei from other countries, compare notes, and listen to the interesting things they have to say.

JACL was instrumental in getting this organization together in 1980. And once it got on track, it was off and running. Then JACL got into the redress campaign in the mid-'80s. As JACL was focusing on all that, they stepped out from the international picture. But since I like to travel, I'm pushing it.

Togami

(laughs) We knew that from the blue coupe days. In looking back and reflecting on the Los Angeles Japanese American community, I found that when I was here this past Monday, there was an interesting story in an old issue of the Pacific Citizen written by Togo Tanaka. You were mentioned in a resettlement article. And in the article, both you and Togo Tanaka held different positions on integration and assimilation. In your case, you considered those who advocated integration or assimilation to be unrealistic—

Harry Honda

You're talking about— this is in the '40s, huh?

Togami

Well, this was in a July 19, 1947, article in the Pacific Citizen. In it you talked about unrealistic aspects of integration, assimilation, while Togo Tanaka viewed assimilation differently.

Harry Honda

I think Togo Tanaka was coming from Chicago at that time where they had the advantage of making a better living— they were able to support themselves ahead those who came out of camp and were just getting started in L.A., at that time. I

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guess, my thought at that time was that it was important for the Nisei community to find themselves and try to maintain community life.

Assimilation, I thought, at that time, was just merely [a way] to disperse our numbers to the point of where we don't know each other. So I think that was one of my reasons why I thought that assimilation was unrealistic. The same thing occurred in the '60s, or maybe late-'50s or '60s, when the Methodist church decided to get rid of all their Japanese churches. Not get rid of the church, but I mean the Japanese conference, which was the conference of Japanese churches. The objective was to have them mix in with an existing conference in their particular area.

At one time, all the Japanese Methodist churches would gather once a year from Spokane, Seattle, down to L.A., San Francisco, and parts of Denver, Salt Lake. They would gather and the person who was in charge of the conference was able to appoint ministers for other churches when their time came up. They would be moved around every three, four years to other churches within the conference. I think in the fifties they decided to assimilate and spread out.

Evidently, the Japanese conference was having problems maintaining itself, so it was time to have— like the church in L.A.— to become a part of the geographical conference for Southern California. There's one up in San Francisco for Northern California, and one in Seattle for the Pacific Northwest. But it didn't last. You saw some of the Nisei ministers then saying that they were losing the community as far as the Japanese church goes. So they started to come back.

Elimination of a Japanese conference didn't pan out as expected. So now you see Japanese churches are back in style. Some of the Methodist churches that came up in the '70s, '80s were bigger than ever. They didn't have to build up in J-Town under the old rule. They would still be out in the southwest part of town. I think that's what probably happened.

But somehow, if you ask the Issei and Nisei, one of the ways to remember your roots is to maintain what you have, and what little there is. You must maintain what you have, so that the Sansei, Yonsei

can remember where they came from, you might say.

When you stop and consider that the Japanese Americans were the only ones to be locked up by the government in camps during World War II, you realize that no other group of people in American history have been put in that kind of situation. So there's where America was unique.

I toss my hat off to the American Indians— Native Americans who are trying to get their land back. In exercising their rights to ownership of land, the tribes want to do

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whatever they want within their own reservations— within their own territory, and now with their casinos.

There is a place for keeping specific ethnic or indigenous communities alive and together, for America is not just one same single ethnic, but a diversified community. Where else in the world can you find a country with so many different last names from different places? Now we are getting used to Albanian names, right?

Togami

Yeah.

Harry Honda

Yeah.

Togami

So do you think that during the postwar years, the way in which the Japanese American community developed in Los Angeles, in their unique way, they were able to retain a lot more. Were they able to hold on to some of their cultural traditions, and retain or refashion them?

Harry Honda

I think it is only natural, because you have people who are interested in their cultural arts. People want to keep their community together through education. The taiko

groups are a good example. How the young people picked up on it is amazing to me. The only time when we had taiko pounding away was in our prewar days at Obon dances. (laughs)

Togami

It sounds, as if, the Japanese American community has refashioned itself through the years, but it's always remembered that there has been a history and heritage here.

Harry Honda

But I think it is only human. Humanity or what is it? Family tradition should be maintained and passed along. Of course it evolves from time to time, but it is the whole idea of being able to pass down what your memories were like. Maybe this oral history is part of that.

Togami

We hope it will be.

Harry Honda

Yeah, yeah.

Togami

Well, do you have any other comments that you would like to add before we close?

Harry Honda

Well, I think how you make use of— how you implement, how you make use of the material that we're collecting here, how is it going to be made available to the wider community one of these days ought to be explored. So that the next couple of

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generations can pick up a tape and learn from looking at the screen as opposed to reading a manuscript. (laughter)

Togami

Printed matter, again.

Harry Honda

Yeah, yeah.

Togami

Well, on behalf of the REgenerations project and the Japanese American National Museum, I'd like thank you for your time, very long time today, your cooperation, and your candor. I appreciate it.

Harry Honda

Okay. I'm glad we had it in this room, because the sound doesn't bother or bounce around like the other place.

End of interview 2 of 2

About this text
Title: REgenerations Oral History Project, Volume 2: Los Angeles Region
Date: 2000
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