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TI: Earlier you mentioned how you have a lot of family in Colorado, and so -- on your dad's side, so they're Japanese American. I was wondering, when did you first hear about Japanese Americans during World War II being removed from the West Coast and being sent to camps?

EW: Probably wasn't until maybe ninth, tenth grade. I only remember it because reading about the, in the Hawaii Herald, or Hawai Hochi, which is a Japanese American newspaper in Hawaii, and I just remember reading articles about it. I don't think my dad even subscribed to that until I was in high school. And certainly, yeah, it wasn't something that we, my parents talked about or my father talked about, or my family's, my father's family talked about when I was growing up. Where my family was situated in Colorado during World War II was pretty unique in that for some reason, either because they were beyond the exclusion zone, they were not relocated, or because I've heard that the governor of Colorado was sympathetic towards Japanese Americans. Because of that, or a combination of those reasons, they were not relocated or put in internment camps. Or it could have been there weren't many Japanese Americans anyways in Colorado, so they weren't really seen as a threat. But because of that, maybe there wasn't really much emphasis in teaching that history to the children and grandchildren.

TI: So although your dad grew up on the mainland, he probably didn't know that much about the camps, either. Because his family didn't have a history. Because you're right, in Colorado, they weren't in that military exclusion zone, so they weren't removed.

EW: Of course, I mean, there were internment camps right in Wyoming, right above Colorado.

TI: And actually in Colorado, too, I think Amache was there, Granada.

EW: Yeah. And then especially in Hawaii, too, there weren't many Japanese Americans who were relocated. There were a few who were sent up to the mainland. So I guess because of that, because I was in Colorado and because I was in Hawaii, it wasn't, that history was not imposed upon me or taught to me.

TI: But, and so ninth, tenth grade, you first found out about it, you read this article. What, what did you think when you first heard about this or read about this?

EW: There isn't much to think about. I mean, it's, for a lot of people, it doesn't hit home when it doesn't happen to you, when it's not a personal experience. There was, somebody told me this story the other day, of a man, and his father used to always tell him about his experience, and that his property was stripped from him, and they were put in concentration camps. And his son would go, he didn't experience that in World War II, I guess he was born after. And he would say, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, whatever." But then when he finally learned that the property that was taken away from his father or his father's family was worth, now, these days, it would have been worth millions of dollars, then he was upset, and he's like, "Oh." So yeah, it's hard to imagine if it doesn't happen to you personally, even if it's in your own family. So I guess I didn't think about it too much, but it was interesting to know, and I think that history, that information, is valuable, especially as a part of Japanese American culture.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.