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TI: Today is March 2, 2002 and I'm Tom Ikeda. I'm the interviewer. We also have in the room Arlene Oki, and the videographer is Dana Hoshide, and today we have Grant Ujifusa. And Grant, why don't I start with... you live in New York and you're in Seattle this weekend.

GU: Yeah.

TI: What brings you to Seattle?

GU: I'm here to participate -- or, in fact, it's just happened yesterday -- to participate in a board meeting of the Japanese American National Memorial Foundation. About twenty people showed up. We've completed the physical construction of what I think is really a magnificent memorial. And the question before the board during this last meeting was, okay, are we gonna go on and do "education," tell our story through the memorial? And it was a go, no-go meeting. We decided to go. And the analogy that might be used is: we have built a great skating rink, okay, magnificent skating rink. Now we've got to spend some time and effort and money to get people to come and skate. We have defined education as the effort to get people to come and see our memorial, and that means Japanese Americans, it means ordinary white people, it means ordinary international visitors to Washington. We want some portion, for starters, of the twenty million people (a year) who come to visit Washington as tourists, including, we hope, lots of young people. Let's say, a percent of twenty million, one percent of twenty million, if they came to visit our memorial, then we can tell a whole lot of our story.

TI: Now why is that important? Why is it important that these people, these, a fraction of twenty million, go to the memorial to hear the story?

GU: Well, for two reasons. Number one, we want them to know our story. We think our story is a compelling human narrative. Okay? It's interesting. We want to get our story before the public. And the second reason is that we feel that if they learn our story, it contributes to their life and their understanding of (what) the fundamental propositions of what democracy (are) in this country. And you understand what those fundamental propositions are when those propositions no longer obtain for you, when they are taken away. Now you see the American Constitution at work. My grandfather is running a little store in Japantown, and the next day those fundamental propositions about American life are no longer part of his life, then his life changes. That could happen to anyone. It could happen to the tourist who wanders through.

TI: Now for you personally, what got you involved in working on this project?

GU: Well, I was asked by... who was I asked by? I was asked by some people in Chicago to join the board, perhaps ten years ago. And I didn't attend the early meetings because I was tired. I had done redress during the '80s and I wasn't gonna take this up. And maybe it's just sort of my fate, I get pulled in because I want to get into some sort of internecine battle going on, on the foundation board. And they said, "Well Grant, you're among the very few Sansei who really worked closely with Mike," Mike Masaoka. "And they" -- and I didn't know who "they" were at that point -- "want to keep his name off the memorial." And I thought to myself, well this is outrageous. Mike is the single greatest leader that this community has ever produced. He (was) a brilliant man, and not only intellectually brilliant, but imaginatively brilliant. So if you asked him, how do you do something, he knew how that was to be done in Washington. So I felt that if anyone was to be on that wall, ahead of Dan Inouye, ahead of Norm Mineta, ahead of Ronald Reagan (and) Harry Truman, it had to be Mike. And so I said, "Well, I'm comin'" --

TI: So can you --

GU: So here we go.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.