<Begin Segment 21>

TI: Now, we're running late on this tape, so I want to ask, kind of just to finish up, with all your experiences, and now you live in this area, I'm curious. There's going to be a, they're talking about doing a memorial about Japanese Americans at the Minidoka camp. And I was just curious how you felt about, about spending money to do something like that, to memorialize the Japanese Americans who were, who were incarcerated at Minidoka.

BB: I have... I don't have mixed feelings. I say, let 'em build it. And I hope it shows what happened to them and how they got there. When you have a memorial, it explains the reason for the memorial. Now, we know that this used to be a garden area, and they grew a lot of vegetables, whatnot. So...

TI: How about the fact that they're using money to do that, and rather than perhaps doing a memorial for the men who died on the Bataan Death March or in the Bataan prisoner of war camps?

BB: We have memorials over there, and I've been to a couple of memorials, in fact, I was accused of having, trying to get a credit for helping a memorial be built, which I had no part of, I just smoothed some of the cement on it, because of, the History Channel, they wanted me to look and see what made this memorial. What do you think a memorial is? Is it redemption? Is it thanksgiving?

TI: I don't know. What do you think a memorial should be?

BB: I think a memorial should be a part of history, and tell us who was there and how they felt in general, and why they were there. Now, we know that we made a big mistake of imprisoning Japanese Americans. We should never have done it. Should have let 'em live their own way. And I felt that way about Salinas; here we knew a lot of the Japanese, why should you take these fellows and put 'em in an enclosure away from their homes when they were part of our community? Gosh, I went to school with these kids. Why punish them? They didn't do anything. And I've talked to several of the fellows in the 442nd, of course, naturally, you would. Curiosity, what they went through, they were darn good soldiers.

TI: Good. Anything else you want to talk about or end with? I mean, this was, again, an incredible story.

BB: No... I think that our part is a matter of history, even if it isn't in history books. We talk ourselves, among us, and we had little things that we did that we don't talk about very often, except among ourselves. I don't think we have any animosity. In fact, most of us have friends in Japan that we really love and like. And through the years, because of age, we've lost communication, they've died and whatnot. And I guess the young Japanese don't want to have any memories about us or anything, so we leave it stand that way. What's forgotten is forgotten.

TI: Now, do you think that's a good way of going, or do you think it's important that some of this is remembered so things like this don't happen again?

BB: I think it should be a reminder that we made a mistake, just like the Japanese made a mistake in our treatment. Maybe they understand why they did it. We think, or most of us think it's because of the samurai tradition. And I'm a pretty good reader of samurai, so I know quite a bit, I've got quite a library at home of the Japanese army and of course, the POWs, I must have about twenty or thirty books of that same thing. And I just hope and moan mine, that what some of the writers have written about never happens.

TI: That's good. Well, on that note, thank you very much for the interview and your time. This was excellent. Thank you.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.