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MN: I know you've been active with the Manzanar National Historic Site also.

AM: Yeah.

MN: You know back in the '70s when there were all these Sanseis trying to get that site preserved, what did you think about it? Were you like a lot of the other Niseis, did you think that that chapter should be forgotten?

AM: No, because I was kind of glad to hear that they were gonna make that into a historic site and that, my father spent so much time there taking those pictures for the Manzanar and he was, he became very good friends with Ralph Merritt, who was the camp director, who happened to know the same people that my father knew. They were Ansel Adams and Edward Weston, and Edward Weston, when he was in Glendale, he was having such a hard time trying to sell his pictures, so my father -- it was just beginning of the Depression era, 1925 -- so my father helped Edward Weston by having the Japanese people sponsor an exhibit for him. And so many people of the Japanese, kind of, interest, bought his photograph, so he was very happy with it. He, Edward Weston even said that people, these, "Some of these people even borrowed money from people to buy my photograph," so he was very happy with it. And then, well, my father was very good friends with Edward Weston because he learned photography from him. Edward Weston was very close friend with my father, too. And then Ansel Adams and Edward Weston were very close friends because they both lived in Monterey, and so when we got married I discussed with my wife where should we go for our honeymoon and I thought, I thought. I thought, oh, what about Yosemite, because Ansel Adams is there. So we decided to go honeymoon to Yosemite, so on the way we stopped in Monterey and met Edward Weston there and I introduced my wife to Edward Weston because we were on our honeymoon and, oh, Edward Weston was such a nice person. He was not that old at that time, so we went to see him. And then we went to Yosemite, and when we got there I saw Ansel Adams. He was conducting a class, so I just kind of walked close to the class where he was teaching -- he was teaching outdoors -- and when he saw me all of a sudden he dropped his thing, what he was doing, he had a class that he was conducting, and he comes over and tells me hello. I said, "Hey, you have a class going on." He says, "Oh, that's okay," he says. So he came and greeted us and then I introduced my wife to him, and oh, we had quite a good time there, but in the meantime his class he left behind and so he went back to them after we left, but that's, that's the kind of man he was. He, he was such a nice man.

MN: Let me go back to Manzanar right now. Are you happy with the direction that the Historic Site is taking at this time?

AM: Yes. Alisa Lynch, who was working hard to try to preserve it, so she used to come and ask me, because my father already had passed away, and so I tried to help her as much as I can, the information I had, so I tried to help her that way. And so she still calls me now and then to ask me certain kind of questions. I forgot what it was, but I would, if I'd remember I'd try to tell her some of the things, how it was.

<End Segment 36> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.