DENVER—Bill Hosokawa, a former Denver Post editor and author, has died.
Hosokawa, 92, died Friday at the home of his daughter Christie Harveson in Sequim, Wash. A private service was planned there.
During his 38 years at The Post, Hosokawa held several positions, including war correspondent in Korea and Vietnam, columnist, editor of the Sunday magazine Empire and editorial page editor.
He was among thousands of Japanese-Americans forced from their homes by the American government into internment camps during World War II. He was profoundly affected by his time at Heart Mountain Camp in Cody, Wyo., his daughter Susan Boatright said Saturday.
“It was a humiliating experience,” Boatright said. “He came away from it not as a bitter man but as someone who wanted to educate the world about that experience and make sure it never happened again.”
Hosokawa was 26 when he was sent from his home in Seattle to the camp in 1942 with his wife and an infant son.
“In the eyes of the government, I was not a native-born American citizen—I was an enemy alien,” he said in an interview years later. “Why? Because my parents were born in Japan, a country with which we were at war.”
While at Heart Mountain, he organized and was the editor of The Heart Mountain Sentinel, a newspaper distributed to the camp’s residents. He was released from Heart Mountain in 1943.
Hosokawa also worked at The Des Moines Register in Iowa, at the Japanese Consulate in Seattle, and at The Far Eastern Review, a monthly in Shanghai, China.
After retiring from The Post, he was the reader’s representative at the Rocky Mountain News.
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Information from: The Denver Post,
