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TI: And the reason I ask this question was, I was wondering, 'cause you've been involved in two really large initiatives. First redress, and then the National Memorial.

GU: Uh-huh.

TI: And in a lot of ways, helping to bring closure to what happened during World War II. And I was wondering, do you think we're at the point where we are coming to closure in terms of what needs to have happened to address what happened in terms of the incarceration during World War II? Or do you see on the horizon, other things happening?

GU: I think we're pretty close to closure. Redress happened and everybody contributed, left, right, middle, whatever. Vets, non-vets, resisters. I think we're gonna come together and say, okay it happened, it's terrible, but they, Jesus, they apologized and they gave us twenty thousand dollars. And if you think about it, we're certainly better off than, let's say, the Algerians in France or the Turks in Germany. In both of these things I think, both redress and the memorial are driving us towards closure.

The other thing that happens, of course, is, as one of my friends said, the divisiveness between ethnic groups -- and (removal) indeed was in a certain way as an ethnic battle. The ethnic whites of various sorts including let's say Okies in the Central Valley of California, and maybe even some Italians in San Francisco, and Armenians, and just sort of ordinary WASPs from Illinois and Iowa. Said, "Jesus, we've got these people who are a security threat and they also just beat the hell out of me in truck farming. We've got a chance to get 'em out. Let's get 'em out while we've got the chance." So here are these white people, here are hakujin people, and here are these Nihonjin people... why is there gonna be closure because, for some time now the hakujin people have been marrying Nihonjin people. And this issue is being defeated in the bedrooms of California and the world. And the kids come out hapa. Could you imagine an Issei saying, "My grandchildren, all of them married to whites? I mean, kind of disgusting to me, that we should marry out. And besides, those whites think of us as 'Nigger-Puerto Rican-Jews.' They don't want to touch us." Well, it didn't turn out that way. And hakujins and Nihonjins twenty-five years from now (when) most -- maybe not most, who knows what the numbers are -- most people of Japanese heritage are only a quarter Japanese, they're gonna look back at this and they say, "Grant was fighting for Mike on this issue on this little memorial? I mean, what was that about? And Japan and the United States actually went to war? That's crazy." And so, to some extent, (it) be mercifully forgotten. On the other hand, our memorial says, and redress says, hey, across the generations, we're all dead now. But Kilroy was here.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.