INTERVIEW WITH DON HATA

Last in Line (Detail) by Don Hata

EXCERPTS FROM THE INTERVIEW WITH DON HATA:

 “There were signs and posters all over the neighborhood about Japanese people being ordered to leave, and our mostly white neighbors knew we were leaving. They saw us packing our pickup truck the night before. Nobody came to our sale.  As we left the next morning, we turned around the corner in our pickup, my dad stopped the truck, got out, and walked back around the corner to look back at our house one more time.  He paused for a few minutes and returned to the truck with tears in his eyes. It was the first time I had seen my father cry.  I heard my mother say to him, ‘What’s going on?’  He said, ‘The motherfuckers are looting our house.’” 

“Today, U.S. citizens are being gunned down in the street without consequences to their masked killers … We fought fascism in World War II, and we have to fight it again in 2026”