Bill Hosokawa: Survivor, pioneer, inspiration

By Kristen Go
Reporter
The Arizona Republic, Phoenix

Posted: Nov. 9, 2001

Related Story
Harboring no ill-will

A college professor told Bill Hosokawa not to pursue his dream of becoming a newspaperman. It was 1936. No newspaper, the professor said, would hire a "Japanese boy." At that time, it was unthinkable that Hosokawa would go on to break the color barrier in the world of newspapers and that he would become one of the most noted editors (and the first Japanese American editor) at The Denver Post.

And at that time, it was unthinkable to the young Hosokawa that in just a few years, 1942, he and his family would be herded up with other Japanese Americans. That they would be stripped of liberty and sent to an "internment camp," the U.S. government’s method of "containing" people of Japanese ancestry, most of them U.S. citizens, after the Japanese bombing of Pearl Harbor.

I interviewed Bill Hosokawa, now 87, at a café near The Denver Post building. The first thing you notice about Bill is his humility. He has earned many accolades during his 54-year career in journalism. But he is humble about his awards, saying, "I must have 25 to 30 of those plaques… They’re all piled up in a corner.’’

His career has been a series of firsts and triumphs. Hosokawa is a pioneer. In his passion, perseverance and humility lay a story for all of us to learn from, no matter our generation or race.

Kristen Go: Mr. Hosokawa, you have talked about an experience in college, at the University of Washington, where one of your professors said he didn't think you should pursue journalism because of your Japanese heritage. In light of that, what made you decide to pursue journalism?

Bill Hosokawa: In high school in Seattle, I was thinking of going into engineering. I soon discovered that my mathematics was poor. I had credits to graduate, but I wanted to go back and play some football. So, I went back for (one more) semester. During that period, I took high school journalism just because it sounded interesting. While taking that course, I became interested in journalism as a career.

Q: You didn't see your professor's comment as a deterrent?

A: Well, he was trying to deter me. He was thinking of my best interest, I'm sure. And what he was saying was reality. I don't think there were any Asian Americans, or even any non-whites, on any metropolitan newspaper. Journalism was pretty much the (preserve) of white Anglo-Saxon Americans. He was thinking of my future, I'm sure, when he said, "Look, you aren't going to get a job, and you'd be smart not to proceed. You ought to get into something where you'll have a fighting chance."

It must be emphasized that this was 1936, or thereabouts. The country was in a very deep depression. And very few college graduates were getting the kind of work they wanted. It was very obvious that if Bill Hosokawa, the Asian American, and Jack Armstrong, the All-American-Boy, went to apply for the same job -- and we had identical qualifications -- that I wasn't going to get the job.

But I decided, "Well, this is what I'd like to do." I continued my course.

Q: Did your professor’s words ever come back to haunt you?

A: Soon after, I got a very practical demonstration of what the professor was talking about. There were about 25 or 30 of us concentrating on journalism. And during the winter Christmas vacation, the class would be divided up into teams, and would go out with some members of the faculty to work on a smaller regional newspaper, to be sort of apprentice reporters, apprentice copy editors, to give students some practical experience in the city room.

And I was not permitted to go on these trips.

Q: What was the teacher’s reasoning?

A: I asked him why I was being left out. His answer was: "Well, we don't think you would be welcome by the publisher of the newspaper." He was just assuming that I would be uncomfortable.

Q: Did it bother you?

A:I resented it, but I didn’t let it overpower my thinking. I said, "If that’s the way they want to do it, to hell with it." What encouraged me was that some of my classmates said, "This isn’t right; this is discrimination." I don’t know if they went to the prof and talked to him or not. At least they let me know, and they let some of my classmates know that they thought this was very unfair.

Q: Did the experience say anything to you about either the profession of journalism or American culture in general?

A: I was aware that that sort of discrimination existed. While I resented being excluded, I don’t think I was really surprised by it.

I had grown up in a segregated atmosphere. I went to a grade school where I would say 80 percent of the kids were Jewish. I knew they had their customs and high holidays and I just accepted that as part of the world that we lived in.

I knew that many of my friends in high school lived in a much nicer area than I did -- but so what? That’s where they lived, and that’s where I lived. I never felt inferior.

Q: Tell us a little about your first newspaper job.

A: I still was in school. There was a little weekly paper in Seattle called The Japanese American Courier. The editor and publisher, Jimmy Sakamoto, was a former prizefighter who was blind from injuries received as a boxer. The newspaper was in a very precarious financial situation, and they needed all the help they could get.

I went to see Jimmy. I said, "‘I want to work here." And he said, "We can't pay you, but you're welcome to work here."

Q: You helped establish an English-language newspaper in Singapore. How did that come about?

A: When I graduated in 1937 there were no newspaper jobs. I took a job as an English secretary at the Japanese Consulate in Seattle. My job was to write letters for the consul and write his speeches, that sort of thing.

While I was there, I heard of a Japanese fellow, a publisher of a Japanese/English paper in Singapore, who was planning to start up an English-language edition. And he was looking for someone with an American journalism background. Singapore was a British colony, and they had British-style papers with classified advertising on Page One and that sort of thing. I applied for the job. He hired me sight unseen.

Bill Hosokawa and his wife stayed in Singapore for about a year and a half. Mrs. Hosokawa returned to the United States to deliver her first child. Bill Hosokawa then went to Shanghai to work on a monthly magazine, "The Far Eastern Review." He returned to Seattle five weeks before Dec. 7, 1941 -- the day of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

Q: I’ve read a little bit about your experience during the evacuation and relocation of Japanese Americans. Can you describe what it was like for you and your family? You had just returned to the United States.

A: I was very tired, and I rested up a while. Then I began to look around for work. And I went out to the university where my old professors were, and they talked about it. They didn't give me much hope of being able to find a job at any of the local papers, and suggested I apply to the State Department and other government agencies. And I sent out some letters of application.

And then immediately (after Pearl Harbor) any hopes I had of finding a job were nil.

I had time on my hands. I went to work for the Japanese American Citizens League in Seattle. They were very busy trying to help people who were confused and frightened who didn't know what to do about all the regulations (for Japanese-American citizens) that were coming up.

We fought the evacuation, and tried to conduct a public-education program to show that we Japanese Americans were indeed Americans -- that we had made a place for ourselves in our community, and you didn't have to be afraid of us being saboteurs and that sort of thing.

I had some friends on the Seattle Times and Seattle Star and the Post-Intelligencer, and tried to plant stories with them. I tried to (convey) the idea we were just common folks running the grocery store. The Seattle Times, I recall, did a full-page feature.

Q: Do you think the news articles helped ease some of the concerns or preconceived notions about Japanese Americans?

A: Our friends knew us; our enemies knew us and hated us. I suppose there was a large population in the middle, and they may have felt disapproval or hostility. There was no concerted effort by anybody to tell the authorities, "Hey, you have this all wrong, you shouldn’t be doing this." There was none of that, except on the part of a few individuals, usually church people.

But it was a losing battle. In May 1942, Japanese Americans in Seattle were sent to an assembly center called, ironically, Camp Harmony, in Tuyallup, Wash. We were there for three months, and then I was sent to Heart Mountain, Wyo. This was a (Japanese-American) relocation camp. Pretty soon, there were 10,000 people down there.

Q: You published a newspaper in the camp. How did that come to be?

A: The man in charge of what was called the "report department" said, "Well, we're authorized to set up a newspaper here. I think we'll need a newspaper." He had heard of my background.

And he said, "Why don't you take over as the editor and organize it?"

So I did. There was a weekly paper called The Enterprise (in Cody, Wyo.) They had a printing plant, and they had some newsprint. The big problem was getting the newsprint. We signed a contract with them to publish an eight-page weekly paper called The Heart Mountain Sentinel. And I got together some people with some journalistic background or people who wanted to work on a newspaper. And it was repeating this whole thing I'd done in Singapore -- setting up a format in English, getting a type style, headline style, and laying out the paper.

Q: How did you reconcile your being an American citizen with being denied your most basic freedoms?

A: Of course, there was disappointment in me, anger in me. But I don’t think I was ever consumed by anger. There are some Japanese Americans who still are very angry about it. But when people ask me about that, I tell them there are a lot of other things to do in life, and if I remained angry for 50 years I would go crazy.

Q: After your family was released from the camp, is that when you were able to get a job at The Des Moines (Iowa) Register?

A: You were allowed to leave the camps if you had a job and a place to live. The War Relocation Authority set up a division to help people find jobs. They wanted to get the people out of the camps as soon as possible. And there was a great demand for skilled labor in the interior of the country.

The War Relocation Authority found a job for me at The Des Moines Register. They went to the people at the Register to say, "Hey, we've got a guy here who's a professional newspaperman. Can you hire him?" And they said, "Sure, bring him along."

My wife, my child and I were allowed to leave the camp and go to Des Moines. I went to the paper and said, "I'm Bill Hosokawa, and I understand I have a job here." And they said, "Great, glad to see you. Go to work on the copy desk." And I did.

Q: Were there many people of color in Des Moines at the time?

A: I don't think there were. There were a few Asians. Many of them had come to the city from the relocation camps. There was a black section (of town), but I don't recall any (black Americans) working on the paper except the janitors and custodians. It was primarily a blue-collar white city.

Q: I read in one of your columns that initially you were a little hesitant about going to work for The Denver Post.

A: Yes.

Q: What made you decide to go there?

A: I'd been in Des Moines for two years and I liked it there, although the climate was horrible. I liked the people I worked with. I liked my neighbors.

But my wife and I wanted to come back west, if possible. And I had written to a friend of mine -- my boss at Heart Mountain Camp. He had lost his brother, and I had written him a letter of condolence. He wrote back saying, "Hey, there's a guy named Homer Hoyt who's taken over as editor and publisher of The Denver Post. And they are hiring people. If you want to come back west, I think it might be a good idea to apply for a job."

I did, and several weeks later I got a telegram saying I had a job, if I wanted it, on the copy desk. That sounded like good news, but I began to have doubts. The Post had been a terrible newspaper, and it had been very hostile toward minorities. And if you read my book, Thunder in the Rockies, there's a whole chapter on how biased the newspaper was. I began to wonder if one man could change the paper and make it into the kind of publication that I would want to work for.

I wrote and asked for an interview. At that time, there was a train running from Chicago to Los Angeles. I caught the train and rode it all night and came out here, and … went up to see Homer Hoyt. I told him what my concerns were. He told me that the old forces had gone. The new force would be a fair newspaper. He was going to help make it the best paper in the country. He wanted me to help him.

He also said, "You will go as far in this organization as your abilities will take you." I said, "Mr. Hoyt, that's good enough for me."

We decided to buy a house in Park Hill. And when we agreed to buy this house, the real estate agent said, "Sorry, I'd like to sell you the house, but I can't do it." I wanted to know why. "Well, we don't think the neighbors would like it very well if you bought a house in this neighborhood."

There was nothing I could do about it. I found another house that was for sale by the owner, and decided to buy that. My co-workers at the Post became aware of my problem and decided to have a housewarming for my family when we moved in. There were 50 or 60 people from the newsroom who came out to the house, and we had a great, outdoor-picnic lawn party. This was to demonstrate to people in the area that I had friends. It was heartwarming for them to do that for me.

Hosokawa was the sole person of color on the news staff at the Post. He performed a number of editorial duties, and soon, started up the management ladder, eventually becoming editorial-page editor and distinguished columnist. He "retired" in 1984.

Q: You had a number of experiences in your younger days that might have discouraged a less buoyant person -- beginning with the professor who told you not to go into journalism. What is it about you that made you persevere to the point of triumph?

A: I just minded my business and did my work. Maybe it was something my parents instilled in me. I felt that anything I did, I should do well.

Q: Do you feel that the monetary reparations that interned Japanese Americans finally received were adequate?

A: I didn’t like the word "reparations" because it was like one country seeking something or demanding something after a war. To demand individual monetary compensation for that experience, I felt, was demeaning to the experience -- they’re putting a price on it. My feeling at first was we should not be asking for individual payment, but that some fund be set aside by government to educate people on the evacuation and the injustice and the meaning of the Bill of Rights.

Then Congress approved a commission to conduct hearings and the commission itself proposed individual payments. They found the whole experience was a terrible injustice… At that point, I said, if Congress wants to offer it to us as a result of a committee finding, I would have no objections … so it wasn’t just a victim saying, "My God, how we suffered, and we want some money." It was the government itself saying, "We did wrong, and we should compensate these people in some way."

Q: Did you feel that was adequate compensation?

A: I don’t think you could put a price on that experience -- $20,000 per person was a significant amount to many people.

Q: When young journalists of color -- any color -- read your story, hear about your life, what do you most hope they will bring away with them as a lesson?

A: I don’t like to hold myself up. I’ve made a good living. I enjoyed what I was doing. I raised a good family. If there’s any lesson, it’s that the opportunity is there if you are prepared to seize it. You have to be qualified. You have to have an education. But if you have the stuff to make good with, the opportunity is there.

Q: If you had one piece of advice to give to young journalists of color just starting out in the news business, what would it be?

A: It doesn’t do any good to say, "Give me the opportunity," unless you are prepared to seize it.

Kristen Go, a 1996 and 1997 Scholar, is a reporter at The Arizona Republic. Reach her at gogrlk@aol.com.

Mister Hosokawa does not have an e-mail address. You may write him via snail-mail c/o The Denver Post Online, 1560 Broadway, Denver, CO 80202-1577 to be forwarded to his home or send an e-mail to the newspaper.

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