<Begin Segment 33>

DM: Well, are there any other things that you want to get down on tape as long as we have you here?

AM: Well, I have to tell you about Min Yasui first.

DM: Yes, please.

AM: My obligation to the Min Yasui award was that I have undertaken a recognition of Minoru Yasui's life. City, you know, he worked for the city and county at Denver, and community services for twenty-five or thirty years. And when he died, then Wellington Webb, who was the mayor, designated one of the buildings in the city and county of Denver to Minoru Yasui. It's a building called the Minoru Yasui Plaza. And Ron Abo, who's a Sansei, Yonsei, I guess, who was the architect who designed it, came to JACL and said, "Would you be interested in looking at the lobby and trying to see what we can do about depicting Minoru Yasui's life in the lobby?" And again, it was one of those situations where nobody said, "Yes, we should do it," so I said, "Well, I think it's another situation where we cannot not do it." So I said I would take responsibility for that, which has been a long journey because we're still talking about living Yasui family members, so we're trying to involve them in it. But in the process, I have learned so much about Minoru Yasui that, that we all know the PR pieces about Minoru Yasui. This is an incredible human being. Do you know that when he was in prison, in solitary confinement, he still wrote letters to his baby sister and his family saying, "This is a good, America is a good country, it deserves our respect," and so on. Can you imagine that? He was a steadfast -- you can say all kinds of things about that, but for me, it's not so much what he said, but his commitment to something bigger than himself, and acknowledging that and then pushing that his whole life.

So we're, I think we're getting to a point where we can say we're arriving at a place where we can put up a lobby description of Minoru Yasui's life, and it's going to be much more about one person's place in this, in this country, that's what I think of it. Because it's, you know, we all are in this country, in the United States of America, which means that we have a certain obligation to it, I think. But Minoru Yasui saw that obligation in quite a different way than most of us do, and I wanted to sort of make sure that we present that side of what I think should be presented. So yeah, we have a graphic artist, Ron Abo, who is the architect, graphic artist Elaine Shiramizu, and she's, she and I and Robin Yasui and the Yasui family members, Holly and Iris and Laurel. Minoru Yasui named all three of his daughters after flowers: Laurel, Iris and Holly. And all three of them are involved in it, which means, of course, it's a little more difficult than just plowing through and doing something. But anyway, that's one project that I hope that I get done before I die. [Laughs] Well, I know I will, but it's just... yeah. We've been in the process two years now, and we've collected enough money that I think we can do it. But we have to work with the city and county because the city says, "If you put up any kind of exhibit, we want to make sure that it doesn't get destroyed, and that's it's the quality and the kind that will not be destroyed easily." So we're working on that, and I think we have a theme now that will work. And that is -- I hate to use the word "patriotism" but it's really not that so much as "One man's place in this country," is what I would like to think of it that way, and how he had impacted the rest of us in ways that we do not know. And that's sort of the value of a human being, is based on what, how you impact other people without really knowing who they are and how they are impacted. I think it's the value of, that any person is based on that. I don't know if that makes sense, but...

DM: Is there anything else that you want to add?

AM: No, I think Minoru Yasui is a good exit. [Laughs]

DM: Well, you said earlier in the interview that it's a never ending journey and it's a lifelong endeavor, and I think you're also a wonderful example of how that endeavor can lead to really great things and building bridges between different groups of people, and to restoring, as you said, human dignity to others. So thank you very much.

AM: Thank you.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright ©2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.