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TI: In going back to your decision to, to do the book, Hello Maggie!, so you did a children's book based on the story you just told. How did that come about?

SY: Well, it turned out that my mother was living by herself and she was very lonely, although my brother lived in South San Francisco, and I was in a basketball tournament in San Francisco area, and they had a San Jose reunion. I went to the first reunion in Los Angeles, the Heart Mountain reunion, and I heard my name, Shig, and I turn around, it's not the wrong, wrong Shig. And I found out that this is really a Heart Mountain for high school and older, not for guys my age and under. But, I said I'm not doing it for myself, I'm doing it for my mother's entertainment. She really liked it. She loved talking with people, communicating, but the thing I noticed was there'd be somebody sitting in the corner, a couple, and I thought, they came from a strange town, and not, going back home, not talking to anybody, so I would go up to them and say, you know, "Where are you from?" "What block were you in?" not to be nosy, but just to make them feel that I am interested in you. And so my mother, since she enjoyed in so much, and I went home and then I got a postcard from the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation. And I received it, you know, to join the Heart Mountain Foundation, and I said, well, why would I want to join Heart Mountain Foundation when all I talked about was leaving, not ever going back? So I put this on the side of the, the side of my desk, and three weeks later I was ready to chuck away the things I don't need. I looked at this and I thought, Dave Reetz, Patricia Wolfe, John Collins, LaDonna Zall, you know, all the other Caucasians, they had a few Japanese, Carolyn Takeshita, Takashi Hoshizaki, and so forth, so I thought, I felt sorry for 'em. Those poor people in Wyoming helping the Japanese, they didn't have to go to camp, and the least I could do is join.

So I submitted my twenty-five dollars, and I said, "Here, I support you." And I get a newsletter looking for artifacts. The only thing I took out of Heart Mountain was an emblem that actually hung at the window of Block 14-1-C, on the inside, showing that Sam Horishige, my uncle, was in the U.S. Army, and below was, outside, was Maggie's cage. So I donated that one thing, so all throughout my high school and all throughout the years I lived until my mother died, it hung in my bedroom. And so I donated this, and I wrote, "To whoever it concern, the stem is broken, it's discolored, so if you throw it away, I understand." But then I got thinking, how many Japanese American was able to take out (artifacts) -- because you can only carry, carry in so much, you can only carry out so much (items) -- so, I'm thinking nobody had cars, so I felt sorry for the Heart Mountain Foundation. So I said... because of the people that can't donate, I don't know why, I got a brand new typewriter, I mean, a computer, I wrote Hello, it wasn't called Hello Maggie!, it was about that magpie bird. Patricia Wolfe said, "I went to Heart Mountain, I delivered flowers to Heart Mountain for Maggie, nobody would ever know that the flowers was for Maggie except you and I." And I thought, here's a Caucasian that feels so strong about this bird, and this is over fifty years ago, after the war. So I called her up (to thank her), and she said, "We're having a little get-together in California. Why don't you come out?" So I said sure. I didn't realize, I thought it was going to be in Los Angeles, it was in San Jose, so I went over there, and that's how I got involved. Later on, I joined the support group and later on Patricia Wolfe said, "How about joining the board of directors?" I said, "Wait a minute, I only have a B.A. degree." I says, "You got people with, with PhDs, you got people with money." I says, "I honestly, I don't get a pension, I don't have the money," I says, "you wanna get people with higher caliber than I." And she said, "Shig," she says, "we can't get men to join." I felt sorry for her again, and the Heart Mountain Foundation. I said, "I'll join." And I have a hundred percent attendance with all the Heart Mountain Foundation meetings. It's cost me a pretty penny, but I don't look at the money aspect. I'm looking at it, my appreciation for the Caucasian that helped. And, because I believe in thanking the people that have done the work, and when they went to Washington, D.C. and said, "Here, we'll help any other relocation camp that's interested, we won't do the fundraising for you, but here's the technique what we did." Sharing. And I think all the relocation camps should be saying, "Thank you, thank you, guys." You know, how hard is it to say thank you? [Laughs] This is where I come from. And when I was in the service, I was at -- (Narr. note: I was a hospital corpsman stationed at the San Diego Naval Hospital and transferred to the 11th Naval District headquarters in San Diego.)

TI: Well, before we go there, so, I want to just follow up in terms of, the book. So it sounds like you wrote about Maggie, you went to your computer, you wrote a little bit, and you were getting positive feedback from the other Heart Mountain people, and so I'm just curious about the whole book and how that all came...

SY: And what happened was they had a resister seminar at the University of Wyoming, and I attended, and I was a brand new board member at that time. And so I took off my board member badge to meet all the teachers, because the majority of 'em were Caucasian. You know, "Any questions about Heart Mountain? I was there," all this, except at the very end there was a elderly that came up to me and said, "How did you get involved?" "Well, I was in Heart Mountain." And she says, "No," she says, "Why are you here?" And so I said, "I'm on the board of directors and the reason why I became a board of director is because they (wrote) a story about my magpie bird in the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation newsletter." She said, "Here's my card. Send it to me." And I said, "Sure I will, and not only that, but I'll send you all the other information that I have in my computer." And then, I did all this, I got all the information, I got her card. I can't, I have her name in my address book, but, Barbara (Chatton), PhD, University of Wyoming, she teaches youth, children's book and youth, and she's the one that said, "Write a book on it." So here's a lady that wanted all this information so that she could get potential book, children's book writers to get ideas, not just only my story, but all ideas, especially camp, because unless you're there, you can't tell the story, unless you hear it from someone else, secondhand. And now, the next thing I did, I wrote, maybe about five, six stories, different ways. One way was from a bird's aspect, and this PhD says, "No, no, that's not, that's not good, write it from your standpoint." And at that time I contacted Willie Ito, and I said, "Hey, Willie," I said, "I'd like you to illustrate this book, because you were in Topaz and all the camps are very similar. We all had a guard tower, we all had barbed wire, we all had mess hall, we had similar activities, and so forth." And at that time he was working with Disney, and so it took us maybe another three years before we got this rolling. And he got really interested, and so now, not only Willie Ito, we got Barbara Bazaldua, Jim Franzen, Waitak Lai, we got all these Disney people, that I'm the only one that's not involved with Disney, and these people are all helping out. And all because of Maggie, and I thought this is tremendous, you know. And now I look at it in a different aspect. I belong to an organization called, it's a place where they have the largest collection of bird eggs, from little tiny bird eggs like this to ostrich eggs. I'm not heavily involved with it, but they donated a real magpie stuffed bird for the foundation. And so I join each year and so forth. And now, I'm looking at these stories for the newspapers, the polar bear, because of the ice melting, they're dying off, the foxes and the eagles and the condor -- I just read today two condors were dead because of the lead in the bullets -- and on and on and on about there's no animals that's going to survive, because the human element has taken over.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.