Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Grant Ujifusa Interview II
Narrator: Grant Ujifusa
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: March 2, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ugrant-02-0007

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TI: So, Grant, I live in Seattle.

GU: Yeah.

TI: And I have teenage children.

GU: Yeah.

TI: And we take trips every year to go to a place. And people have said that I should go to Washington, D.C. to see the National Memorial. Why would that be a good idea for me and my family?

GU: Well, in the first place, it's just aesthetically stunning. So I ask myself, or I tell myself, "You mean us Buddhaheads, were able to -- after all the squabbling and the nonsense -- able to put together this world class monument?" I say, "Hey, that's pretty good." So, it's aesthetically stunning, it doesn't matter what race or gender or ethnic group you are. It's aesthetically stunning. And, hey, we did that. And it's a memorial, really, to the travails of the Issei and Nisei generation. And specifically honors those guys who were eighteen to twenty-five, eighteen to thirty, who -- this sounds almost religious -- who died for us. And so there's a kind of a feeling of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. You see these 800 guys and say, Jesus, they were eighteen years old and dead in Italy. Come on. What happened? And you say, I get it. I get what happened. And it allows you to experience that. And I think it'll allow your children to experience it.

TI: Well, from that perspective, if you're, if you're a high school student as my daughter is right now, what do you think she would come away from? You know, here she, she knows what happened during World War II. And by going to the memorial, what do you think she'll take away from it?

GU: Well, I think she might take this away: "My grandfather and my grandmother tested the fundamental propositions of American democracy," which is to say, democracy as it's understood all over the world now. "They tested the fundamental propositions of American democracy. American democracy failed. It failed them. And, but Grandpa and Grandma prevailed. And in the end, so did our system of government. So to the extent that our lives depend on roads and bridges and airplanes, it also depends on our fundamental propositions about life, and about what rights we have. They were taken away from Grandma and Grandpa, but they came back. Hell, I come from a pretty good bunch of people. I'll take a lot of pride away from that. It's particular to me. It's particular to my family. It's particular to Japanese Americans but it has universal applications. Hey, I'm in the middle of this. That's pretty good. Thank you."

TI: Now, if you were not a Japanese American teenager, but if you were a Irish American, or a African American, what would you take away by going to the memorial? Or is it just for Japanese Americans?

GU: Well, this is a hard question. (Let's say) you're an Irish -- you're a tenth generation Irish American from Boston. Let me tell you what happened to us. Well, you see, they bombed us, and we were (sent to) camp -- and they say no, no, no, I don't want to hear that. I want you to listen to my story. We showed up and the Yankees hung out these signs "No Irish Need Apply." So, there is a little bit of a problem. (We say), hey, listen to our story. And they say, no, no, no, you listen to our story. Who's "us" anyway? So that's gonna take a little doing. But, I think as I said before, if, with little bit of guidance the same proposition applies, namely, this is what happens to anybody, black, Irish, Italian, Jordanian, when the fundamental props of our democracy are kicked out from under you. So, it could happen to you. And we put this thing up to inoculate the society against it happening to you, the Jordanian American. So, think about it. I think it'll work. So anybody of any gender or race whatever who goes there and wants to think about the fundamentals and the basics can come away with some greater appreciation of how important those basics are.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.