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TI: I mean, I want to sort of segue into a few months ago you went to the Minidoka reunion where many of the, of the people who were at that camp who were still alive came together at a gathering and you participated. And I wanted to get your sense of how, how that felt. Here there were hundreds of people, and how that felt for you?

EBA: Well, there were, I think a little over eight hundred people there at the hotel at SeaTac Airport. I was thrilled to be able to participate in that. Not only thrilled but I was honored. I honored, I felt honored but I think I was, they were honoring my father's memory to have me speak there. I look at this whole experience and I say that, when I'm talking about this reunion last year, I look at the -- and again I'm speaking from a pastor's heart -- but I look at this experience of that gathering as, as a redemption. I was able to talk about our experiences and I think for the, for many of the Japanese, maybe more the Isseis, this was a time that it's time to start telling our stories and not deny by stuffing our stories and denying, that we don't want to talk about that because it's hurtful or that's the Japanese way, Issei way of you just be silent and...

TI: So you're talking about the Isseis or the Niseis?

EBA: I'm talking about the Isseis.

TI: Okay.

EBA: But also for the Nisei, too, 'cause I think the Isseis especially, they've been very quiet about that.

TI: Well, and there's so few of them left.

EBA: There are so few of them left, that's right. But I see this, and again I put this in category of faith, as a redemption, and I think of the Old Testament story of the Israelites being taken into captivity and they were jerked out of their land, left their farms and homes and all that they knew and were carried into a foreign land. And Psalm 137, I think it is, speaks of that experience and it says, let's see if I can recall it, it says, by the waters of Babylon -- because they were taken to this land of Babylon -- by the waters of Babylon we hung our harps and we, then we sat and cried, we hung our harps on the willows and sat down and cried and our captors said, sing the songs of Zion. And it goes on to say, how can we sing the songs of Zion in a foreign land? And I've taken that same psalm and sort of paraphrased it and it goes something like this: by the waters of the Snake we sat down and cried. On the, on the birch we hung our koto and our captors said sing us songs of Bainbridge, and we cried, how can we sing the songs of Bainbridge when we are in a foreign land? And, but there is a companion psalm to that, that talks about them being released from captivity and coming back with joy and being able to start again. And so there's that experience, too, of the internment being ended and coming back. But, I think the redemption, for everybody, Issei, Nisei, me, anybody, the redemption from that comes in being able to go back and remember those experiences and then we start telling stories to each other. There is redemption in being able to connect in a relational way that way. We tell our stories. It's cathartic, but it's also something of a heritage or a history that we pass on to the next generation so they don't, so they don't forget.

And Soren Kierkegaard, the Danish philosopher, writer, said something to the effect that we remember our lives backward, but we live our lives forward. And it's this remembering the backward that from... in telling our stories and engaging in grief, engaging in pride or whatever comes out of that, that engaging in those emotions and those thoughts and those stories, that gives us, that empowers us to live our lives forward and we gain strength from those stories and remembering those experiences so we can go on and take up the lessons that are learned from that and pass it on to the next generation also. So there, I, in fact, I think I said in my speech, at the end of my speech, is that, well, in the II Corinthians book in the New Testament, Paul says, he writes, "Thanks be to God who comforts us in all our troubles with the comfort that comes from God." And he goes on to say, "So that we can comfort others with the comfort we have received." And it's taking of those experiences, learning the lessons and being able to pass it on and help others. But he also goes on to say in that same passage: these things happen so that we will not rely upon God -- or ourselves, so we will not rely upon ourselves but on God who raises the dead. And I said, Minidoka is our resurrection.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.