By Sharon Yamato
I had been meaning to write a column about Art Hansen months before he died, especially knowing he was slowly losing his ongoing battle with cancer. I had this vision of him picking up his copy of the (ever the faithful reader), seeing his name across a headline, and sending me an overly kind but always eloquent thank-you note.
Art was not one not to linger in others’ praise. He had many more important things to do — like putting the final touches on another book; discovering new material that he hoped to publish; reading and writing yet another book review for the Nichi Bei News; answering every solicitation from Japanese American colleagues; and sharing his lifetime of work with other scholars and friends while telling stories of the many Japanese American greats he had known and interviewed.
His mastery as an oral interviewer gave him the platform to let others speak, but make no mistake about it, Art also loved to talk.
Two years ago, at a tribute to him at JANM, Art sat patiently while several of some of those scholars and friends showed up to let him know how grateful they were to him. Take, for example, a story told by distinguished UCSB professor Diane Fujino, who drove from Santa Barbara to personally thank him.
She told how she reached out to Art for information while writing her book on Nisei radicals. Art painstakingly took the time to go through archival papers to find what she needed and graciously sent it to her. She later wrote him, “You are taking this up as if it’s your own project.”
As friend and mentee Gwenn Jensen, who drove all the way from Denver to be there, would concur, “He was generous to a fault.”
Art was not just a scholar, but he became a good friend. He is perhaps the last living historian to have had close friendships with people like activist Sue Kunitomi Embrey, Manzanar martyr Harry Ueda, author/activist Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Heart Mountain resisters Yosh Kuromiya and Frank Emi, newspaperman James Omura, and many other notables who just happened to be Japanese American.
Ever grateful to be accepted even though he was (in Art’s words) hakujin, Art was one of the few scholars entrusted to tell their stories and convey their confidences.
When I was working on a film on the intrepid Michi Nishiura Weglyn, Art was one of the first people I turned to. He held her in such high regard and became such a good friend to her that whenever we spoke about her, he wanted to make sure she was not forgotten. It was just like Art to want attention for others and none for himself.
He also had the distinction of being the only historian who had personally conducted interviews with everyone from WWII military hero Ben Kuroki, redress opponent Lillian Baker, deaf incarceree Hannah Holmes, and several of the landmark Japanese Education and Resettlement Study (JERS) members, including Robert Spencer, Togo Tanaka, Charles Kikuchi and James Sakoda.
With his gentle inquisitive and persistent approach, Art won over his subjects easily. As he humbly put it, they were all eager to share.
In fact, when he first interviewed the elusive James Omura, whom Art pointed out at the time most people thought was dead, he literally couldn’t get him to stop talking, even over a point at which the tape recorder broke. His four-day interview resulted in perhaps Art’s lengthiest oral history and resulted in two books, “Nisei Naysayer: The Memoir of Militant Japanese American Journalist Jimmie Omura” and another hopefully soon to be published by the Nichi Bei Foundation.
Art once said that he liked oral history because it allowed others to be interpreters of their own history, and he got to act as the midwife. In fact, Art was much more than the deliverer of information; he challenged interviewees with his own heavily researched knowledge as well as personal storytelling that in turn elicited the best from each subject.
He was one of the first to take a stand in refusing to believe that Japanese Americans all went quietly into camp. As Art so passionately put it, “I couldn’t believe that people could be such willing accomplices to their own imprisonment.” It thus became his goal to give voice to those once considered silent.
Those voices are contained in Art’s valuable works dealing with everything from the Manzanar Riot to the Heart Mountain resisters to the Tule Lake “No-Nos.” This complicated history of resistance has since given way to richer and more thorough studies for which today’s scholars owe much to Art.
As our friendship blossomed in the later years of his life, I got the full impact of Art’s retrospection. Over long phone conversations, we talked about everything from UCLA football to his early days at UCSB, to his fondness for working at JANM, but he always returned to anecdotes and reminiscences about all the Japanese Americans he had grown to know and respect.
Art truly loved his work and the people in it. Even though he once admitted that he loved sports more than anything, he said the only thing he loved more was the Japanese American community. It made me happy when Art told me that Debbie, his loving wife of 48 years, liked when I called because Art would always be smiling when he hung up the phone. Sharing his love of our community gave both of us the kind of joy that couldn’t be contained.
Even if you were to strip Art of his position in the pantheon of Nikkei trailblazers he spent his illustrious career documenting, Art will ever remain — simply — a great friend who paved a long and beautiful path straight to everyone’s heart. There will never be another like him.
Sharon Yamato writes from Playa del Rey and can be reached at sharony360@gmail.com.Opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of The Rafu Shimpo.