<Begin Segment 16>

MN: What are your thoughts about... I remember in L.A. when Rabbit in the Moon showed, there was a lot of buzz within the JACL because they felt that it was an anti-JACL movie. How did you react to that?

CO: We knew that was going to happen. And there was angry stuff in the Pacific Citizen particularly. And we kind of brushed it off like... oh, my reply? Oh, one letter, one email came and said, "They waited until Iron Mike was dead," like it was some kind of a sneaky thing to do to him. "If he were alive, he would have really told them off." So I said, "Thank you for your opinion. The JACL, please make your own documentary to show your side of the story." So that's my exchange with somebody, Nobuyuki...

MN: Kawai?

CO: No, somebody else. But he used to be a director or something with the JACL. And NAATA at that time wanted, they sent out copies of Rabbit to every chapter of the JACL in the United States pre-showing on public television so that they would be prepared for whatever fallout would come from it. I know all that happened.

MN: And you folks were also invited to speak at a JACL tri-district.

CO: Yes, in Salt Lake City, Utah. So we went and fended off... oh man, there was a nasty old man and he says to me, "What did you do for redress?" And I said, "Well, I worked for ten years on redress." I mean... oh, well. [Laughs]

MN: Do you want to share the story about when you won the Emmy and who was with you backstage?

CO: Oh, you mean our former congressman? Give me the name, I can't think of it.

MN: Mineta.

CO: Norman Mineta, right, yeah. So we scraped together money to go to the Emmy awards because nobody was giving us our plane ticket fare or anything. Oh, what's-his-name gave us his frequent flier miles and that's how we got there. [Laughs] So it's a pretty fancy deal in this big hotel ballroom. And people like Dan Rather, all those media people were there. So we felt like really tiny mice at a grand party. Anyway, so we're milling around with people and Norman Mineta is there. And I'm wondering, "What is he doing at this thing?" Well, he was on the program, and I think he did speak. Then he left, but I was told afterwards that Mineta did not vanish, he stayed in the back rooms waiting to see if we were going to win or not. So he did hear that we had won an award. I don't know what to make of all that except that he never sent us a letter of congratulations or anything, which I thought, "Gee, given the situation, you'd think at least he'd say he saw us there and he knew we had won." But he never sent us an acknowledgement. So that's how deep the enmity went, I guess, 'cause that's not very Japanese.

MN: Of course, Norman is, his sister was married to Mike Masaoka.

CO: That's true. But we didn't name Mike Masaoka in our film. We considered that, and I thought, "Well, you know, I'm not going to name names. This is going to be about an organization and what it did or what was said in its name, I'm not going to pick out names." Now, Frank Abe does have Masaoka on camera and stuff, so that's different. But we didn't name him.

MN: Anything else you want to add? I've asked my questions.

CO: [Laughs] Well, just that over the years, I've become very aware of what a deep effect that the incarceration had on individuals and on the community as a whole. And that the rift that developed in the camps will always be there. It will never be crossed. And that's really unfortunate, and I'm sad about that. That people who fought the internment on whatever level were somehow categorized as unpatriotic or did great damage to our image or our community or something like that. That's a great tragedy for the community, that it never came to terms with the reasons why were put into the camps. So I'm eighty years old, I'm not going to be here that much longer, but I guess in my lifetime, those issues will never be resolved, and it's a great tragedy for our community. That's good enough.

MN: Thank you.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.