<Begin Segment 18>

TI: Any other events that you can remember?

SI: Oh, yeah. Well, there's a lot of things that happened in camp that I would consider very memorable. My very good friend Edison Uno, whose dad had a hobby in taxidermy, he was able to get the authorities to approve him going out of the camp to collect specimens. So Edison and I would go along with him and go out and collect different types of insects, birds, whatever, out there. And that was an opportunity for me to get out of camp again. He had a little bird that he had captured, had a wounded leg. It was a water bird, and it just hopped around all the time. Brought it home and tended to it, and he'd be walking around with one leg, just hopping around all the time. [Laughs]

TI: So you mentioned your friend, Edison Uno. Edison Uno later on was one of the early proponents of redress, spoke out for getting redress for Japanese Americans. What was Edison Uno like, and how would you describe Edison?

SI: What was that again?

TI: I'm sorry, is this the same Edison Uno that later on worked on redress? And I was just curious, what was Edison Uno like? I mean, describe him.

SI: Oh. Well, you see, Edison and I were schoolmates, both in the same class, and he lived very close to me in camp. And so we would walk to school every morning, he'd come and pick me up and we'd go walk and walk back, also, we'd be on the same softball team. And I got to, you know, be a real chum with Edison. At that particular time, he didn't have any real strong feelings about redress, but I know later on in his life, especially in the later, since he was one of the last, they were one of the last families to leave the camp, long after everybody else has already left the camp, he and his dad were still there. And he would write letters to me saying that, "We're the last ones here." And I don't know what the reasons were that detained his dad, I mean, I don't know why he was kept so long in camp. He was very bitter about the fact that he had to be there when everybody else was gone. And it's for those reasons I think that he got into the redress movement.

TI: Do you know what his father did, what his father did before the war?

SI: I really don't know. I think he was in some kind of business that had to do with trade between Japan and the United States. I'm not sure exactly what kind of business he was in.

TI: But when you think of Edison, how would you describe him, though? What kind of personality did Edison have?

SI: Well, first of all, he was the president of the class, so that shows that he was very popular, very outspoken, very friendly, had a tremendous sense of humor, he was a good cook. Used to cook apple pies, or pies, you know, and give it to all his friends. Very outgoing type of person.

TI: And so when he got involved with the redress, were you surprised that he did that?

SI: I didn't learn about this 'til quite a bit later, when I was reading a paper about Edison and found out that he was an outspoken critic, especially of Governor... gee, who was the governor of California at that time?

TI: Was it Earl Warren, maybe?

SI: Warren, yeah. He just said, "We should impeach Earl Warren."

TI: So did you ever write to him or communicate with him after the war?

SI: Yes, I was already back in Seattle, he was still in camp. And so I used to write to him. Unfortunately, I didn't keep any of the letters that he had sent me. But I could feel the bitterness in his letter, and they were still there. And this was long after the war was over. I don't think he got out of camp until '47.

TI: Good.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.