We knew we weren't the enemy

Yoshi and I knew we must seek release from the Minidoka Relocation Center, go inland, and rebuild our lives. She was several months pregnant, and we didn't want our firstborn to join us in internment.

With prodigious help from Prof. Tom Howells, my journalism adviser at Whitman College, we found a small Missouri weekly newspaper willing to give me an opportunity, sight unseen. So we cleared security and, leaving our worried parents, started a new life in aptly named Independence, Mo.

"The pavement is wet this morning," I wrote in that 1943 Monitor article, "glistening like diamonds where the sunlight falls across it. It is good to be out, walking past houses with neat lawns, flowering tulips and greening hedges. It is good to have somewhere to go in the morning, a place to work, and in the evening somewhere to return ....

"It has not been without interesting episodes. Three subscriptions out of 3,700 were canceled when residents heard of my boss's negotiations to employ a 'Jap rat.' One church had a stormy session ... of elders because a suggestion had been made to invite me and my wife to worship there ... and two war plant workers walked out of a restaurant because I was being served.

"On the other hand, people have gone out of their way to be kind. We have been invited to homes for dinner, and we have attended church and concerts with new friends. People have been interested and friendly enough to stop and talk with us ... on the street."

Friends and neighbors were as delighted as we with the birth of David, who we like to say "was conceived in a wartime concentration camp and born in Independence."

After two pleasant years on my first news job, the Des Moines Register hired me, and with some misgivings we moved on. When World War II ended, I won a journalism fellowship at the University of Wisconsin. In the years following, Yoshi and I lived in Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, and Florida as I pursued professional opportunities in academics, newspapers, and public relations.

Our world changes, but the idea of locking up groups of people does not necessarily. Some time ago, a friend got me involved in speaking to young jail inmates. I urged them to take advantage of their time - wherever it is. But I found that what moved them most was the fact that anyone actually was interested in them - just as people were in us in Independence, Mo.

Despite our current war concerns, I'm hopeful that our diverse society will progress - if painfully sometimes - toward understanding and valuing human rights and safeguarding justice for all.

On my family's long journey there were countless individuals who were kind and helpful without whom our lives would have been drastically difficult.

How far we have traveled. The children and grandchildren - even great-grandchildren - of those young interned Americans now enjoy the blessings of our diverse society. Their progress is a credit to them, but even more to a society that once incarcerated their forebears.

My Japanese face becomes less noticeable, and the younger generations blend more and more into their communities and an ever-evolving America. I hope someday that America's Arab faces will enjoy similar blessings.

• Robert Hosokawa is a retired journalist who plays golf and likes to putter on the golf course looking for lost balls and good oranges that have dropped from the trees. His wife, Yoshi, passed away in 1998.

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