<Begin Segment 5>

TI: Looking on the other side... I mean what perspective can you give us -- here you had this twenty-five to six margin consistently, and so there was a minority that continually opposed.

GU Yeah.

TI: But to the point where when I look and look at newsletters, websites, I mean, it's a very passionate minority. And to this day I still think that there, they disagree with what happened. Where does that come from? Why is it so, so deep? This feeling.

GU: Well, that's a very good question. And I think that position has some merit. (I'll) speak to it on a couple of different levels, at the most abstract level first. When you and I as nice middle-class people -- well-educated, can speak, we can speak (unaccented) English -- look back on our past, and on the lives lived by our grandparents and our parents, there is a certain kind of, we look back and there is certain kind of shame. It's not as if in 1923 Japanese Americans in Seattle were regarded with very much respect. In fact, they lived in the ghetto. They had no skills. They couldn't speak the language. They were -- "these bizarre people from somewhere, look weird." And so then we endure the -- at least in this country -- the ultimate form of what some would now would say "dissing." We got dissed so badly that we're shoved into camps. And so why couldn't -- this is in some ways, it's emotionally very compelling, but I don't think intellectually finally, finally justifiable. "But Mom, but Dad, but Grandpa, Grandma, why did you let this man do this and lead us out of our homes and into the desert because," -- sort of in quotes -- "if I were there I could have stopped it. Because you see, I have a BS in Chemical Engineering, and I have these powerful friends and I could have called someone at Channel Seven." No you couldn't have. Channel Seven, (or) the equivalence of Channel Seven, hated us. "I could have called someone at the LA Times, they are so sympathetic." The LA Times hated us. So, in some ways, it seems to me, it's a denial of what was really happening then. Everybody from Walter Lippmann at the top to Walter Winchell at the bottom hated us. And I don't care how many degrees you got from Harvard, it wouldn't have mattered. Because in fact, nobody had a degree from Harvard at that point.

So I, in my judgment, it's a way -- this is kind of an easy way to say it. It's a way of scapegoating somebody for what happened. But, that anger and that sadness, and that shame is legitimate, and in some ways it's understandable that it goes somewhere. You can't say, "Well, the bureaucrats in the U.S. Army and the Justice Department, those sons of bitches." Right? No, that doesn't work. But one of our own, "Aha, that bastard did it." But, as I say, sentiment is legitimate. But I finally have to come around and say you know, I don't think it can be justified by any close reading of the documentary material of the time. In the end, why did Mike recommend that we cooperate? Because if you didn't, you were gonna be shot. So you make the best of a very, very bad hand. And, 1923, 1930, 1935, 1940, we were "Nigger-Jew-Puerto Ricans." We had no power. You think because you're a full professor at UCLA, you have power? You don't have any power today. You wouldn't have had any power in 1941 to stop this.

I also think at the most personal level, here, here the community's traditional Issei leadership was decapitated. It was taken away early, as you know. Here's this twenty-six year old kid from Salt Lake City, who's not even a part of the West Coast experience, comes in and says, "Well, I speak (unaccented) English. I worked for two senators from Utah. I have Washington experience. I'm gonna tell you what to do." And so I think you look back at that, and you say, "This is a usurpation." And so there was, I think, some resentment of that to this day. 'Cause our community is close enough, you always know somebody who knows somebody. Right? You can't say anything bad because everybody's related some way. And so there's some personal (going on). There's some sense of, "Well, my father was taken, my grandfather was taken out. He should've been the real leader -- if the Issei leadership would've been in place we wouldn't have gone, because (there) was legitimate leadership at the time, and this usurper comes in, this little brat, f___s us." And, I think also, at the most personal level, I think, to this day, people say, "Jesus, how come people in the JACL got to bring in a trunk and two suitcases and I can only bring what I can carry in my little bag, my little nimotsu? Those sons of bitches." And, yeah, Mike was also kind of an egotist and hurt some feelings, probably did some power plays against some folks in JACL. Who knows? I have no idea. But people who feel negatively about Mike really hate him. And the full explanation of how deep that goes I can't really fathom. Although, I don't think you can finally be justified by his public acts. I think some of it is quite personal.

TI: At this point, do you think that the schism is so deep that, that it will never be repaired? Or do you see just over time that this will just, just disappear?

GU: I think over time it will disappear because my kids, who are now in their twenties, they'll look back on this at some point, maybe in their fifties or sixties and say, "What the hell was all that about?" And we've had profound national schisms, like in the South, loss of Civil War. (In the 1960s) they're still fighting that Civil War and saying, "Goddamn Martin Luther King is not gonna be able to do this to the Confederate dead. That bastard." That was a hundred years (ago in the '60s). And now you know, say, "Well, gee, you know, boy those guys play real good... those black kids, they show a lot of character playing for Bear Bryant's old team at the University of Alabama. How could we have done that to those people?" So, I think there'll be a more considered, balanced historical judgment of Mike's strengths and weaknesses. And, in 1942 after, after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor, could you imagine that Japan and the United States could ever do anything together again?

TI: Right. So these things, these things do, over time, do have a way of dissipating.

GU: Yeah, because people wanna live their lives. And, most people aren't like the "47 Ronin" who gallantly carry their grudges forever. Oh, come on. As we often say in my home, "All right, everybody quiet down. Let's watch the game. The Giants are on. Everybody shut up. Let's watch the Giants game. Okay? Quiet please."

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.