<Begin Segment 16>

TI: So Julie, when you, in the last, before we interrupted, you were talking about how you used, you looked a lot at photographs and things, and it was interesting, as you were describing that photograph of your, of your grandmother and your uncle and your mother, it reminded me of you, I mean, that's kind of like how your book is written. It's just so descriptive in how things were written. And it just occurred to me, when I talk to most writers, it's, they tend to, at least in my conversations, focus more on the narrative and what happened, and oftentimes they look at diaries and, to get their, sort of, inspiration to write. And you're the first one that I really, it came across that you really look at things like images and photographs.

JO: I don't, I mean, I don't know why I do that. I wasn't aware of that until after the book came out and people said that, "Oh, it seems like you work very visually," and I didn't, I wasn't really aware of that, but I think... well, I was, I mean, I was so fascinated by the landscape and the desert. That just seemed like a character in itself, and I think, I do think, maybe sort of in, in pictures. 'Cause I really have to see things first. And then, I mean, where else, I mean, you can just look at a photograph of like a camp, the camp general store and then see something like Boilfast thread, you know, where else are you going to get a great detail like that? And I also just like knowing what people look like and what they wore. Also, I spent a summer looking at old newspapers from 1941, from the Bay Area and the San Francisco Chronicle and the Examiner and the Berkeley Gazette, and what I really like looking at are advertisements, like style, what people, again, to see what people are wearing and to see what they're eating and what things cost. And, and plus, there's really no narrative in my story. Just, things happen and this family really is fairly passive. They just react, so they're reacting to major historical events, but, and I felt like the narrative, the narrative sort of speaks for itself. We all know what's going on. They're home and they're taken away, and then they go back home; that's basically the story. So it's not really personal story except for it's personal in the way that that whole experience felt to those people.

TI: Well, while you were doing your research, you mentioned how it wasn't until you started writing this book that you really started reading and learning more about what happened to Japanese Americans, and in a more detailed way. Were there any things that surprised you in terms of what you learned? That stood out, like, "Oh, I didn't know this," or any of those "aha" type of moments?

JO: I'm trying to think. Maybe I actually knew more than I was aware of. Maybe I'd absorbed more about that experience than I, than I realize. I don't think anything really surprised me. I mean, you just hear story after story of hardship and despair, but that didn't -- no, except for the tap dancing in the desert. [Laughs] That was the one thing that just, it was like, what a beautiful, lovely, in a way, sad moment. And then I guess it's always the... I mean, I do, I did look at memoirs. I would read memoirs and I just loved to find the occasional anecdote that just, that works. And another anecdote that I remember my mother telling her, me, but much later -- not when I was a kid, but just, about the day that she... you could, if you had money, you could order from the camp. You could order goods through mail-order catalog, either Sears-Roebuck or Montgomery Ward's, and she ordered her, a pair of crepe-soled shoes, and I guess those, maybe crepe-soles were all the rage, and the day she got those shoes was just a great and wonderful day in her life. So things, I guess those were little moments of joy, or little things like reading about how, how somebody grew an orchid in a, in a coffee can. So I guess those were, those were sort of like bursts of color. That's how I see them. Sort of moments, just little incidents that stand out against the vast, sort of gray, dusty background of the desert. These are the things that, I think, catch my eye.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.