IT WAS 50 years ago that editorial cartoonist Pete Hironaka submitted his first drawing titled, "Forgotten in Our Rush?" for this page (May 26, 1957). Genesis to this cartoon is told in his book, "Report from Round-Eye Country: a Collection of Sketches, both Verbal and Visual, by a Transplanted American!" (1981).
"Some time in 1952," Pete recounts, "I got a call from a Mrs. Yuri Yoshihara. She had seen my name in the (Dayton Daily) News, and knowing that it was a Japanese surname [and] I was tempted to tell her I was Polish because we were getting some Polish literature in our mail. She extended an invitation to Jean and me to her home. There was a small group of Japanese Americans in Dayton that had organized the JACL chapter. Yuri and her husband, Hideo, were having a group over for a short meeting and a social get-together. (Hideo was chapter president in 1953.)
"We found it be an assemblage of congenial people. Jean and I joined the JACL. (For the record, Dayton JACL was founded in 1949. Ex-Florin Nisei leader Mas Yamasaki, now of Houston, was elected president.)
"Shortly thereafter, we started receiving the Pacific Citizen, the official weekly JACL newspaper published in Los Angeles. I looked forward to reading it every week for we were isolated from Niseidom here in the Midwest. I still read the P.C. quite regularly, always scanning for names of old friends back on the West Coast and others scattered to various regions of these United States.
"When I received the June 3rd edition of the P.C. back in 1955, I leafed through the paper deliberately as per usual. I came to Washington Newsletter column by Mike Masaoka, JACL Washington representative ... He lamented the fact that after 10 short years, the remembrance of the supreme sacrifices of the Nisei GIs was steadily declining every succeeding year, especially on Memorial Day.
"As I read [Masaoka's] column, I kept thinking that there should have been an editorial cartoon to accompany Mike's conscience-piercing message. I cut the article out and put it in my desk drawer.
"Early in May of 1957, I came across the column [that I had clipped] and read it again. I decided to draw up a cartoon (as mentioned above) and send it to the P.C. editor. Shortly thereafter, I got an enthusiastic letter from Harry Honda. He said he was going to use the cartoon and wondered if I would consider becoming a regular contributor to the P.C.
"I had sent the cartoon as a one-shot deal. So his query came as a surprise and a challenge. I thought about it for a few days. I knew it was going to be tough. Living way out here in Ohio, we were far from the activities of the Japanese American community. I decided to give it a try.
"That was 24 years ago (this writing occurs in 1981). I have sent Harry a cartoon for every issue of the Pacific Citizen since the decision was made."
There followed a brief interlude several years ago when there were no Hironaka cartoons, but we're happy now to see him back on this page every issue.
Many readers will relish his selection of over 150 cartoons in his 207-page book. Another Memorial Day piece ("Lest we forget who paved the way") shows a faint scene of a "Nisei who made the supreme sacrifice" on a steamroller paving the highway for "Our life today" family following in their roadster.
It was May 8, 1969, when Pete's family was ready for supper and he was finishing a cartoon. Then came what sounded like a gust of wind, heavy rain, hail and suddenly it was "ominously dark outside."
Pete's home was in the path of a tornado: "indescribable - everything happened within a matter of seconds." He vividly writes of the destruction. The tornado swept his two-car garage off its foundation and dumped it halfway into his neighbor's yard. Shingles in front on Pete's home were peeled off, windows shattered, debris inside from ceiling and walls; yet Pete inked his cartoon, "Time for Bulldozing," and met his deadline. But the cartoon, sketched during this traumatic weekend, addressed repeal of the Detention Act of 1950, some remember as "Repeal of Title II" of the Internal Security Act.
Spearheaded by a few members from Bay Area chapters, Berkeley, Contra Costa and Alameda, JACL lobbied to have Title II repealed in 1968. President Nixon signed the repeal bill in 1971.
NOW, A LITTLE BIT about Hironaka-san. Pete hails from Salinas; his family was interned at Poston II. After finishing camp high school in '45, he enrolled at Miami University, Ohio, drew sketches for the campus publication, enlisted in the Army for two years with the Signal Corps in Japan and with the GI Bill, he graduated in fine arts and continued in "post-graduate" work at the Dayton Daily News for 15 years. Hired by a local ad agency as their art director for seven years, he quit to open his own studio "and has no regrets."
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