<Begin Segment 15>

[Ed. note: This transcript has been extensively edited by the narrator]

JG: How was that piece received when you and David Hacker wrote it for the Amerasia Journal?

AH: Oh, "The Manzanar Riot" article was received very well. I mean, now I probably wouldn't even be able to get it published because there's so much in there about people's names and everything else. I mean, it really just spoke, probably more than to anything else, the comparative powerlessness of the Japanese American community at that time. Because now likely we would be faced with huge lawsuits, as I wrote very revealing footnotes. I just went through all these documents and quoted all sorts of things and outed people who were secret informers. It just wouldn't have been published today, I don't think. But by scholars it was received well. It was the first thing I wrote dealing with this subject, and probably the best thing I have ever written. But I was able to do this. I mean, I was so intoxicated with the topic and I was so full of information. But I was able to do this. After you get socialized into the historical profession, you become a lot more tentative. It's not an accident that the work of young writers is so good. It's not just guts, it's just the, "I don't give a crap about whose feelings are hurt or what if I do this." You just plow ahead to go after the truth. And when you do that, you hurt people, you know. I mean, I have had people come and talk to me about the article. The Tayama family came to Cal State Fullerton and talked to me. And some people apparently did get sued by them, but not me. But today the article just wouldn't be published.

Now, the Manzanar Martyr is another story. When I published that it did get reviewed by quite a few people, and a guy named Bill Moss who was in the Oral History Association wrote a review, in the International Journal of Oral History or the Oral History Review, and he said: "This is an incomplete book because it doesn't say whether Harry Ueno was involved in this beating of Tayama. He claims he was framed, because had blown the whistle on people in the camp administration for stealing sugar and selling it on the black market. So it's incomplete." But when I think about that charge, every book is incomplete. I mean, there's always a point at which you can't say certain kinds of things. There's some barrier and if you don't impose it, your publisher will. So all historical writing is a work in progress, and the same thing is true for any sort of book. That's just a part of the journey of discovery that you're involved in while you're here. And even as people open up that envelope containing Harry Ueno's letter to me and read it, they still will be on a journey of discovery, too. So, yeah, the Manzanar Martyr is an incomplete book. I thought it was a stupid statement for Bill Moss to make, I really did, a philosophically dumb thing for a smart person to say, actually.

But that book, when Raymond Okamura reviewed it, he said, "Give 'em hell, Harry," and then he said, "This is a book whose footnotes are as good as the text." At that time, Okamura was trying to get me dissed by the Japanese American community for different things that he felt I was flagrant about, and he wanted a community board to review anything that I wrote before it was published. In his review he implied that he thought the other two authors connected with the book, Sue Embrey and Betty Mitson, had written the footnotes. But actually I wrote every one of those footnotes.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.