Bill Hosokowa (Inducted 1998)

I was born in Seattle, Wash., in 1915, which makes me an old duffer, nearly four years older than my brother Bob, who was honored by AASFE last year.

My parents were Japanese immigrants who never learned to speak English well. I went to the Seattle public schools, became sports editor of the high school weekly, and decided journalism might be an interesting way to make a living. My adviser at the University of Washington agreed journalism was a fine profession, but urged me to enroll in some other course.

No publisher in the country would hire a Japanese reporter, he said. I told him I would stick it out. The professor was right. I couldn't get a job after getting my diploma in 1937. So I headed for the Far East and worked until 1941 on the Singapore Herald, the Shanghai Times, and the Far Eastern Review.

I came back to Seattle five weeks before Pearl Harbor and several months after that I was among the 115,000 ethnic Japanese locked up by their own country as possible security risks. My detention camp was Heart Mountain, Wyo., where I edited the camp newspaper, the weekly Heart Mountain Sentinel.

When the government finally decided we were American citizens entitled to the protections of the Bill of Rights, I was allowed in 1943 to go to Des Moines, Iowa, where the Register employed me as a copy editor. In 1946 I moved to the Denver Post where, as swing man, I worked as copy desk chief, wire editor, regional editor and page one editor.

In 1950 I went to Korea as the Post's first war correspondent. I returned to Denver that fall to become editor of the new and then stumbling Sunday rotagravure magazine called Empire. Late that fall my bosses sent me to the Columbia University campus in New York to join and learn something from a young organization called the American Association of Sunday and Feature Editors.

Four or five years later, I can't remember definitely, I was elected its president. Empire became one of the country's most successful Sunday roto magazines, with a larger circulation in our circulation area than any of the national magazines, and advertising linage second only to the New York Times Sunday magazine. The Denver Post's roto plant by then was printing Sunday magazines for the Seattle Times, San Jose Mercury, Portland Oregonian, Kansas City Star, Oklahoma City Oklahoman and I was often called in as a consultant to their staffs.

In 1956 I went to the Post's news staff, first as executive news editor and then as assistant managing editor. In 1960 I became Sunday editor with responsibility for the magazine. In 1963 I became associate editor with direct responsibility for Empire Magazine in addition to some heavy duty writing assignments. I was editor of the editorial page from 1977 to 1983. After that I wrote an editorial page column until retiring in 1984. I went to work for the Rocky Mountain News as readers' representative (ombudsman) columnist in 1985 and retired for good in 1993.

In between times I have written 10 books ( one was a history of the Denver Post) and taught journalism classes at the University of Colorado, Colorado State University and University of Wyoming. Among my awards: Outstanding Communicator Award, Denver Press Club; Lowell Thomas Award, Colorado Society of Professional Journalists; Denver Press Club Hall of Fame; listed among "News People" by the Freedom Forum Newseum in Arlington, Va.

I was also founding president of the Colorado Freedom of Information Council. I have an honorary doctorate from the University of Denver and served five times as a Pulitzer juror.