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TI: So you're a student of American history and our government and our society.

GU: Yeah.

TI: And when you think of the students today, and what they have to grapple with, and when they look at, essentially the group versus the individual mentality and what happened, what do you tell them? I mean, how should they look at these things? I mean, what is more important in terms of our society going forward, the importance of the group versus the individual rights and responsibilities?

GU: That's a very good question. I think -- see one of the things that we don't have very much sense of in this country, even the most well-educated, is what history is. I have a friend who is an accountant, a very good accountant in Los Angeles. And he said, "Well, what did you study in college that you come to this?" And I said, "Well, I majored in History." He says, "What do you study in History? And I said, "Well, it was kind of an undergraduate concentration in the period of Andrew Jackson's presidency." Let's see, when was that? 1828 to 1836. And he looks at me and he says, "Grant, how can you study that? You weren't even alive then." And so I can't explain to him like people (can't explain) particle physics to me, I don't get it. Say no, no, no, there're documents you can (use even while) the mental, even the physical world of 1836 is always subject to revision. In the same way you can legitimately reconstruct the world of the Japanese sixty-year-old Issei in 1942. Now, my grandpa was probably, how old was Grandpa in 1940? He was almost sixty. My father was probably twenty-five. They were still part of Japan. (There were) no such things as individual rights (in Meiji) Hiroshima.

But forty years after Min figures (things) out, I say, I get it. The first ten Amendments to the Constitution actually have the force of law. They can't violate those. And so I say to my kids, "Don't get pushed around. Don't let these bastards push you around because you have rights." But you think my grandfather could have told my father that? Are you kidding? Not only did he have no real conception of this, he never heard of John Locke and the idea of natural rights, (which) emerges out of Christianity, and Judaism where you have an individual conscience. That's no part of (grandpa's) world. But, given what happened to these people who were largely in some important sense alien to the tradition of American rights. (We must) look forward (and) say, "Never again." Now we know what the story is. What we say to our children, (to the) children of blacks, Hispanics, Arabs, whatever, we say, "Grandpa went through it. But for you, never again." "Hell no, I ain't goin'. I'm not doin' any of this shit." But to expect your father and mine as Niseis and your grandfather and mine as Isseis to have understood this, even given the enormity of (the) outrageousness, (is not realistic). Franklin D. Roosevelt (and) Henry Stimson, these guys knew what they were doing. All right? They just (ran) a huge number on us. By the way, Franklin D. Roosevelt was a Democrat and probably the most liberal Democrat of this century. They should've known better, but Grandpa didn't know better. He just got screwed. But his great-grandchildren, never.

So, that's the lesson. And it's not especially profound but it does seem to me that to understand it fully you have to understand what the mental world, what the values (that) made sense of life -- (the world together) -- for Grandpa and his twenty-five-year-old son were. And what they did understand, however, as Mike understood, and it's a sad thing. (You ask), why should we have to prove our loyalty when nobody else had to? I'm sorry. That's the way it (was). It (was) raining today. (But) what does everybody understand across cultures, where some people understand natural rights as derived from Aristotle and who knows what else, and the Confucian tradition (in) which there is none of this. What does everybody understand? They understand that when you fight for your country and you spill blood and you die, no one can say, "Well, I don't know whether you're a real American or not." I asked Mike, "You got McCloy to say we're gonna have this segregated unit, 442. Did you ever spend any nights lying awake (asking), 'Goddamn, I sent these kids to die in Italy'?" He said, "Never lost a minute of sleep." And I (asked), "Why?" And he said, "Some things you gotta do."

So, again, it was binary. You do it or you don't. And if you do it, you say, well, Jesus, they died heroes. Their names are on a wall. I'd rather be alive. Wouldn't you? The answer is, then, we can understand why it happened, to the extent that we can understand the historical circumstances of that time. Give them credit. And for the future we say, no, we don't do that. We're gonna do what Muhammad Ali said later. "What did them Viet Cong ever done to me? Nothin'." But (it's) easy for an educated Japanese American (Sansei) to say, "Jesus Christ, what a guy, why couldn't we have done that?" What a bunch of chickenshit people lead by chickenshit leaders. No, no, no. We have one of the great ethnic histories of this country. And as far as I'm concerned it rivals the Pilgrims'. They come across the North Atlantic stupidly towards the late part of September, they land in Cape Cod in November, no food, they half of them die. They're all heroes. I feel the same way about the Isseis who came over here.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.