San Jose REgenerations Oral History Project

Hatsu Kanemoto

General Topics of Interview

Hatsu Kanemoto grew up in the Trimble Road farming community and faced adversity and economic hardship throughout most of her life. As isseis, her parents were not legally allowed to own land, and as she was too young at the time to purchase land herself, her family made ends meet by sharecropping.

When war broke out between the US and Japan, her family made the atypical decision to "voluntarily" relocate themselves to Colorado rather than be interned. Life was hard in Trinble Road, but it was even worse in Colorado where, she says, her family was forced to lead a "hand-to-mouth existence." Ironically, she and her family have often wondered whether it would have been easierÑeconomically, socially, and psychologicallyÑto have gone to internment camp.

Resettlement back in the San Jose area was no easier. Isolated in Colorado (where the Japanese-American population was much smaller than in San Jose) and deprived of all the benefits returning internees received (such as aid from the WRA or the Council for Civic Unity), Mrs. Kanemoto and her family were left to deal with resettlement on their own.

As the oldest of twelve children and a mother of five, it is interested to see how the "voluntary" relocation, the resettlement process, and the changing face of San Jose (from being largely agricultural to urban/industrial) affected her, her younger siblings, and her children very differently. While her youngest brothers, for example, were a part of the industrialization of San Jose (several worked for companies like HP and IBM), she and her husband were forced to adapt to it, turning to gardening when farming was no longer lucrative. Intergenerational discrepancies like these make her interview very interesting.

Biography

Hatsu Kanemoto was born in San Jose and grew up in the Trimble Road farming community. The threat of internment and increasing war time hysteria impelled her family to voluntarily relocate to Colorado for the duration of the war. She was 26 at the time struggling to sustain her family which included a newborn son. After the west coast was cleared for resettlement, Mrs. Kanemoto and her family returned to the San Jose area and witnessed first hand the dramatic changes San Jose would undergo in the next several decades.