<Begin Segment 43>

AI: Well, here we are, this is 2002, and I think perhaps what's important to consider right now is since September 11th --

MY: Things have gone backwards.

AI: The attacks of September 11th, yes.

MY: So my friend Marilyn Bach, who has been labeled a terrorist, all of the -- you know, her colleague, co-prisoners -- Carmen Valentin who had twenty years worth and she, Carmen Valentin had a ninety-eight-year prison term in 1980. And they were just, see, she was a Puerto Rican, and all the Puerto Rican women got sentences from upwards of fifty to a hundred years and they were pardoned by Clinton and so now they're out. And Marilyn Bach is alone in there and since September, September 11th, it just doesn't look very hopeful for her. And at one time it looks like oh, the Puerto Ricans are out, Susan Rosenberg and Linda got out. Linda Evans got out in January of this year, last year, when Clinton left office, and somehow Marilyn got through the cracks. It just seems like the luck of the draw or something like that, which should not be the way people should be imprisoned, you know? Some of these, all of these fifteen, sixteen other women that I was visiting and supporting through the last twenty-two years are now out, and Marilyn's the only one who's there, and it just, it's heartbreaking, actually. I wish that I could help her, but... I'm trying, but there isn't very much I can do. You really feel helpless at this point. And the political climate is such that, and this Iraqi war, saber-rattling is really very worrisome. And we're having a Minidoka reunion in Seattle this year -- next year, in August. And you were not, your parents were not, your parents were what, from Hawaii?

AI: My father was in Minidoka.

MY: Was in Minidoka. Is he still living? I don't know if you could run this by him -- I was going to write to the, I don't know who the organizers are, I haven't gotten a letter yet. I think I'll probably get it when I get home -- that I think the Japanese Americans should as a group, you know like this group, could come out with some kind of a public statement in support of the human rights of Arab Americans. Now we're getting together because of the incarceration, our incarceration in Minidoka during World War II. And the imminent, you know, the climate of the discrimination against the Arabs is really quite virulent at some times, and I think that Japanese Americans to whom this has happened, but way back in 1942, really were to speak out and we had a press conference and said, "I think that many groups of us should stand out for the support of the human rights of Arab Americans," that it would make some kind of an impact. What do you think your father would say to that?

AI: I'm not sure what he would say. But I know that a number of people have said that the parallels -- and in fact he did say that he had this same feeling that he did after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in '41.

MY: Exactly.

AI: That he felt that what was happening now --

MY: Yeah, so what we have to do then is, we can talk among ourselves and we can say, "Oh well, it's really something, isn't it?" You know, making this kind of observation, that we have to translate that into political action of some kind. And the only thing that I can, you know, we're all scattered, we don't know -- but then we're getting together at a physical space, at a time... we have time to discuss it among us who were in this place, and if we were to make a public statement at that time. And I think that probably in August it's not going to go away, it's gonna still be here. So I thought when I went home I might propose it to the organizers of -- I don't know who is organizing, probably a group of Sanseis, right? I hope it's not going to be too much of a... I hope that there will be some Sanseis in that group who would be politically aware enough to recognize that --

<End Segment 43> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.