<Begin Segment 52>

MA: So George, what are some of your plans for the future?

GM: My plans? Well, my plans were to have a lot of fun and travel, okay?

MA: Sounds good.

GM: That's sounds good, but it isn't. Because now, you got the money to travel, but you don't have the desire to travel; you're too old. It's not that easy traveling, it's very hard on you.

MA: But you also fit in a lot of education work as well.

GM: Most of it, with the Nisei vets I have a lot of things that I fit into their program, but it got to a point where I couldn't take an assignment to talk, because sometimes they say, "Well, we want you in March," and they want to know right now if you're, you're available in March. Well, I can't make that promise because I don't know where I'm going to be feeling in March. Especially those years when I had this arthritis real bad, and it was hard for me to even get around. Now it's not so bad, I can get around, but really, when you have arthritis, you don't know when it's going to come back. And then there was a case here recently where I, where I had this job to talk at the Rotary here right before your program, on the, I think it was the 9th. And I was supposed to talk at the Rotary, and about a week before this talk, this guy calls me up who was in charge of the Rotary, and he says, "Well, we got it all planned out now and we're gonna give you -- we got another speaker so we're going to divide the talk between you and her, and you're going to get ten to fifteen minutes at the most. I says, "No way are you gonna get me to talk ten or fifteen minutes." I says -- and finally refused him. He says, "You don't want the job?" I said, "No." I says, "I asked for more time before and you didn't give it to me." I said, "It wouldn't do me justice and it wouldn't do you justice to have me talk for ten or fifteen minutes, because I got a good story and I want to get my story across to give you a good story, and I benefit, because I'm doing something for myself, too, or for the legacy. And sometimes it's not good to promise something for ten minutes. But somebody else took my place, and they were happy with what he said, but I know in ten or fifteen minutes, you can't get across to some thick-headed politicians or people that... you know. And I've been to a Rotary where I got a speaker from Nisei Vets to talk, and the guy that asked me, he went like this -- [makes hand gesture] -- and I knew what that meant, to cut it. Because he had a good speech but it was too dull for them, he was coming out with too much statistics. Nobody wanted to hear numbers, they want to hear a joke or they want to hear something funny or something that they could relate to or anything like that. So I can sit here and tell you numbers, you know, 120,000 Japanese got incarcerated and thrown into ten different camps. It gets so dull that they heard the story over and over.

MA: Well, this has been a great, a great story, George. I really enjoyed talking with you.

GM: The thing about it is, you know, if I can make you laugh, that would be the funniest thing. But there's, there's some stories we laugh, because we could talk about it ourselves. You know, like Dan Inouye, he's, he's a good speaker talking to people, but when he's in another room, somebody's house and talking, he's a different person. And you can sit there and listen and laugh and the women will be upstairs while the men will be downstairs and we'd hear stories that, they're really funny, things like that. But talking to these people is not an easy job, especially kids. Because you want to teach the kids something, and to have 'em look forward to something else. That if, you know, you have to work hard and study hard and stuff like that. And you can't tell a kid that outright, because they're not going to listen to you. You tell 'em, "You gotta study," well, they're not gonna study. You got to give 'em a problem and tell 'em why you have to do it. And if they enjoy the problem, to do it.

MA: Well, I think this interview was, will teach a lot of people, and a lot of people will benefit from hearing about your life.

GM: I hope.

MA: [Laughs] So thank you so much for, for talking with me.

GM: I really enjoyed it.

MA: I did, too.

GM: I think I talked too much.

MA: [Laughs] It was great. Thanks, George.

<End Segment 52> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.