<Begin Segment 17>

TI: You know, you're part of the committee, so you get to see the behind-the-scenes kind of planning, the work, the problems, the hassles. Over the twenty years that you've been involved, what have been some of the big challenges for the committee and putting on the pilgrimage?

JY: Well, to me, I don't know. There's... I think the challenge, I think we kind of lost our challenge because of the fact that people know what we do, they want to know, they want information, they come to the pilgrimage, and they voice their opinion or they voice their story, tell the story, or they want to know about certain things. They come there and then they get... because, you know, the pilgrimage, they never talk about baseball, football, who won the Super Bowl or anything else like that, it's just parents, what did our parents do? What did you have to eat, what did you do all day? They always, everybody's full of questions and you want to fill their voids in their life. That's all it is for me, I try and help fill the voids in their lives much as I can. And it isn't that I know it all, but I can speak up from experience. Because being involved with the administration, with so many people working together and that part of it. So I'm able to give better perspective than average. A lot of people worked in the mess hall, all they do is dish out food all day long. "Damn food, lousy cook." That's all they can talk about, lousy cooks. But hey, they only give you so much, and that's all you're gonna live with, right? I mean, you got to tell the story. They didn't have an order, listing order, so many chickens, so many beef and this and that. "Here it is, guys, you got it, you make it." So you got to tell the facts of life. I think then once they hear that, then they can understand, "Well, my mom says she didn't like to eat this and that." Like us in Tule Lake, we had peanut butter 365-odd days of the year, sitting in the middle of the table every day. I get, just looking at it, you get tired of looking at it, right? You don't want to put it on the bread or nothing because you see it every day. But things like that, certain things like our parents disliked this, disliked that, then they hear about it and now they know why they dislike it because you see it every day, every day, every day. That's those kind of stories there that's daily life type of deal.

TI: How about stories about the planning committee, though? When you had to plan the pilgrimage, behind the scenes, were there some difficulties?

JY: Well, yeah, behind the scenes it's tough sometimes, the discussion. A lot of it is financial, because how many people will get scholarship to go there free or partial scholarship. But we've been very fortunate, we've been balancing our books for how long, people donate enough money. But, so behind the scenes, yes, the logistics of, the topics that we've been bringing up. We're still, intergenerational thing is the number one thing. We've got to have intergenerational meeting to give the people a chance to talk about it. And then there's other logistics like the cemetery, shall we go to the camp site or shall we go to Linkville, or the bus route, how should... so I let them handle as much as they can, and they want to change the bus routes, fine, see how it works. It doesn't work, well, we have to change it again, go back to some of the old fashioned ways. Some of the older guys would like to go back to the old way, how I used to do it. So, "Well," I says, "you guys decide. Tell me and I'll work with you, whatever I can." But get to the point where twenty years is a long time. [Laughs] Getting to... I says, "Well, 2012, in another year I'll be ninety, and oh, I don't want to be doing it again," but who knows? If I'm physically able, well, I'll be doing it to tell the youngsters the story. I think they got to know.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.