Colorado's Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present

Foreword

I N T R O D U C T I O N P A G E ix As the initial offering in the University Press of Colorado’s Timberline Series, we selected Bill Hosokawa’s Colorado’s Japanese Americans: From 1886 to the Present. His work meets our aspirations that the Timberline Series encompass the best works on Colorado. William Kumpei Hosokawa has made history as well as written it. Bill was born in Seattle in 1915. His father, Setsugo, came from Hiroshima in 1899 at age sixteen to work as a railroad section hand in Montana. By 1913 Setsugo had saved enough money to return to Japan to marry Kimiyo Omura, a schoolteacher. She helped instill in their son, Bill, a love of writing that led him to the University of Washington School of Journalism. There his advisor told Bill that he, as a Japanese, would never get a job at a U.S. newspaper. Upon graduation, young Hosokawa found work as a secretary at the Japanese consulate in Seattle. This position gave him an F O R E W O R D Stephen J. Leonard and Thomas J. Noel I N T R O D U C T I O N P A G E x opportunity to go with his new wife, Alice Miyake, to Singapore to help establish an English language newspaper, The Singapore Herald. After a year in Singapore and travels in Japan, Korea, and China, it seemed obvious to Bill that war was coming. He returned to Seattle, arriving just six weeks before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. Bill, his wife, and their infant son, along with others were arrested in Seattle simply for being ethnic Japanese and eventually shipped to the relocation camp at Heart Mountain in bleak, windswept northern Wyoming. After fourteen months of persistent effort, Hosokawa finally was granted permission to accept a $35 a week job on the Des Moines Register in Iowa. In 1946 Hosokawa applied to The Denver Post, which had been relentless in its negative reporting on Japanese Americans before and during World War II. After the war, a new editor, Palmer Hoyt, strove to make the newspaper more positive and progressive. Despite criticism, Hoyt hired Hosokawa. Bill spent thirty-eight years at The Denver Post, rising through the ranks from copy editor to makeup editor, wire services editor, executive news editor, assistant managing editor, Sunday editor, editor of Empire Sunday Magazine, associate editor, and editor of the editorial page. After his retirement from the Post in 1984, the Rocky Mountain News hired Bill as their reader’s representative. He also taught editorial and magazine writing at University of Colorado, University of Northern Colorado, and University of Wyoming. Hosokawa wrote the definitive history of The Denver Post—Thunder in the Rockies (Morrow, 1976)—and Nisei (Morrow, 1969; University Press of Colorado, 2002), the story of second generation Japanese Americans, plus seven other books. A former president of the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors and founding president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Council, he is enshrined in the Denver Press Club Hall of Fame as well as the F O R E W O R D I N T R O D U C T I O N P A G E xi National Cowboy Museum Hall of Fame for the western history he published as editor of Empire Magazine. In addition to freelancing for national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post and Readers ’ Digest, he wrote a weekly “Out of the Frying Pan” column for thirty-five years for the Japanese American Citizens League newspaper , the Pacific Citizen. He continues to write a weekly column for the Rocky Mountain Jiho in Denver, and the Rafu Shimpo in Los Angeles. The Japanese government in 1987 awarded Hosokawa the Order of the Rising Sun for promoting U.S.-Japanese understanding and trade. This quiet, unassuming man has made a tremendous difference with his lucid writing and heroic efforts to right wrongs. Besides capturing the bittersweet Japanese American experience, he has pointed out the importance of clinging to the U.S. Constitution in troubled times. While at the Post but especially after his retirement, Hosokawa has striven tirelessly to promote Japanese American friendship and cultural and trade relations. Morgan Smith, longtime director of the Colorado Department of Local Affairs and a leading proponent of international trade, came to know Hosokawa well. Bill Hosokawa, Smith...