<Begin Segment 8>

TI: And so when, or did your mother ever talk about the camp experience with you, or did you just hear her talking with other people about it? Or how did it come up?

JO: No, not... it just came up sort of by the by, or just really, just as a reference point, or when she was talking about certain people that she knew, or when she was referring back to that time. But she never... it was just something that had happened to me, my ancient-seeming mother in her own childhood. So it was not something I really gave a lot of thought to, and it also didn't seem to be something that either that she was terribly obsessed with or even angry about, although I know that it was extremely difficult for the family after the war because of their internment experience. I think life was just turned upside-down for them.

TI: So when did you first start learning about the incarceration or internment of Japanese Americans?

JO: Actually when I started writing the book. So years and years, I didn't think about it. I mean, I just, it didn't, even when I started writing fiction -- and I started writing fiction late. I didn't start writing 'til I was thirty. And when I did start writing seriously, I wrote comedy, just comic short stories, and so it never even occurred to me to write about the war, quite frankly. It just, it, so I think that I had taken some Asian American Studies classes in college and read some of the required books, and so I'd learned a little bit more about the internment experience when I was in college. But it's not something that I gave a lot of thought to for years.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.