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Transcription below by: Jane P (2008)
Edited transcription by: Joseph Werhan (intern)
Please report errors to: info@tellingstories.org

Telling His Story

There was another story you started to tell, off camera, where at some point it sounded like you were trying to throw away all your papers. Can you tell us about that?

Throw away all my papers?

And that your father was able to recover some papers ...

That's these articles here. And then before I moved out, I had a lot of letters and correspondence with the Woodwards. And some of it was a lot more meaningful than what's here. When I moved out I decided I didn't want it to be reproduced. So I took them out in the back and I burned them. It actually might have been a bestseller if I had got those printed.

What were some of those things you burned?

Just letters to Walt Woodward.

Why didn't you want them to be public?

Actually, I wasn't even intending to publish these letters.

OK.

Actually, I wasn't going to make this scrapbook until the Historical Society on Bainbridge Island wanted them. You've got to get permission from all these people, even though sixty years have gone by. You cannot print them and sell them. You've got to get permission. So I got all these permissions, and they said “If you've gone through all that work, we ought to have it printed.” Because of the size, modern equipment automatically couldn't handle it. It had to be handled manually. So that's why I made it on a copy machine. I only made 1,000 of them. They're all gone. Now I have a lot of people who do call me and write me and say, 'I saw your book. Can I take this out, can I repeat this?' And I have to tell them that I'm OK, but you'd better talk to the people that wrote the particular piece.

So the Historical Society of Seattle contacted you? When was that?

Bainbridge Historical Society.

So when did that happen?

Periodically. I've had this out since about ten years or so. In between somebody sees the paper. There's books like this left at the Bainbridge Library and the Historical Society. Someone sees this and they realize that there might be something interesting.

All of this that's compiled in this book, is all of this stuff that you've compiled from many years ago, or did you write anything looking back on your experience?

No, it all happened before. I didn't write anything except ... I just have a part where we dedicate it to the Woodwards.

What was your motivation in compiling this?

Just that somebody told me 'Why don't you have it made?' That was the only reason.

So there was no difficulty, you deciding?

No.

We don't have time to go through the book at all. There's a whole other interview we could do around that, but at least a few of you have to leave, so unfortunately, we're going to have to wrap it up. We're not done yet, but we're missing chunks. That's fine, because we hope to be able to interview you again in the future.

I'm sorry.

It's OK.

So, but you guys have probably some final questions. I know you do.

Yes. Do you guys want to just go around? Do you have any questions that you want to kind of ...

What is ... what made you really decide to start telling your story about internment?

Because that's a violation of somebody's rights, and I don't want to see that happen to any other group. You know, the majority of society takes everything for granted. But they don't realize there are certain segments in this society that aren't having things just go along smoothly. Periodically, their rights are violated. I hope that the majority will respect their rights, that they can go and—because I hate to wave the flag—but this is a nice country. Beside all that—even though they put you in camp—and they want me to be an interpreter. You have a lot of opportunities, and I think that every citizen is entitled to that. [Gestures to Jessica's sweatshirt] She's going to Stanford!

Maybe.

Oh yes?

I don't know.

She's too young to decide.

Yes, she's two years too young, huh? Oh yes, you've got plenty of time.

How do you think that teaching others about the internment impacts you yourself?

People don't believe this. If you go beyond—maybe a few states here—they don't believe that the United States had a concentration camp! They don't call it that. You can call it what you like, but they put people in who are entitled to every citizen right of anybody else. People don't believe that! They think, even the people who have known that I went into MIS, they think I did that because I wanted to get out of camp. No! It was my duty to do that. Some people think that was the barter. If I become an interpreter, you can get out of camp. And other things. It is kind of funny when you think about it. But that's where I think Japanese-Americans have this little quirk. They felt that they wanted to prove their loyalty, so they stuck to their guns, whereas if it were somebody else, they would say 'Hey, treat me right and I will.' I think that's the only thing I would ... but I don't know. I'm sorry I agreed to this interview.

You're sorry you did?

Yes. I'm not getting the answers out very concise and exactly. It's going slow.

Only you can tell your story. Only you know the right way to tell it, so I think everything you have said is great.

Thank you anyway. Thank you for your interest.

Do you have any thoughts about ... see, I can't either, I'm much younger than you and I can't get it out either. Do you have any thoughts about this project, about high school students interviewing you, capturing this and putting it on the website for others to see? Any thoughts about that?

Without thinking too deeply, I would say, “Hey, it's good” and I don't see anything against it. I don't know that the reaction of the young people is to these interviews that you have. Do they understand?

What do you guys think?

I think they are really good and they're a lot more helpful than just reading about history from a textbook. You really get to see someone that has experienced what you're learning about, and learn their story. It helps give you a real picture, which is so much more interesting to learn your story rather than to learn about internment in general. So thank you so much for doing this. You were great, so I don't know why you think you were bad.

What you're doing right now is just so important, because you were there and your generation is kind of the last generation to be able to talk from a first-person perspective, so it's really, really important that you're doing this.

Our young people are not picking it up.

It's as close as we can come to living a firsthand experience, is to hear the story of someone who did go through it.

You are wonderful people to want to do this. You don't know how much I appreciate it.

Thank you very much. Great, you guys. Great, great.