<Begin Segment 30>

TI: But, so people sometimes ask me about the Niseis and, again, it seems extraordinary to them that there's not this huge sense of bitterness or something that would, that would kind of drag them down, that how is it that they could, they could have their lives so disrupted and then seemingly just go on? Like you're saying, they go, they're progressing, then their life is on hold, and then it's like okay and then just like nothing happened. How is that possible?

MY: Well, I could say it's my personality. Many people say, "You're a 'no-no'? Aren't you bitter?" Well, the question of bitterness never entered my life. "How come you're able to get along with hakujin so easily?" Well, "Why not?" kind of response on my part.

TI: So you see nothing extraordinary in your life in terms of just...

MY: There was nothing extraordinary about this period when 120,000 people were placed in concentration camps, and I was one of the 120,000.

TI: But again, from your, if you look at it from a professional, and if you took another group, a hundred twenty thousand people, perhaps even randomly, and put 'em through what happened to Japanese Americans and Japanese, would, would you expect a similar type of trajectory after that experience? That's, that's the part that people seem amazed.

MY: Sociological background, I could say there were probably a hundred twenty thousand different ways of dealing with that life. Morgan Yamanaka had his own style, as Dave Ikeda's parents had their style of life, and mine happened to be this. Psychologically it may be another issue of what went through my mind.

TI: And how so? What do you mean by that?

MY: Well, a different Morgan Yamanaka would've probably done it differently.

TI: Yeah. But I guess what I'm trying to see, if there's a residual, if there's an impact of those five years that made you different, that it changed your trajectory or how you saw the world.

MY: Well, direction would've been possible only if my perceptions were different. My perception of being in camp was a wartime experience. Was it bad? I would say no, it was not a bad experience because I could compare to the Nazi concentration camp, what the Japanese did in their concentration camps, nor what my sister endured in camp versus, again, what the German Jews experienced in camp. And I experienced my own thing in camp, which is no big thing compared to the wartime experience of the world, because I am looking at the larger picture and I'm just a little speck in that larger picture.

TI: Okay. Okay, again, I think it's not necessarily... and maybe it's you and how you, you perceived in your perspective, but easily, and you know this, I mean, some other people could have taken that experience and used it as, perhaps, an excuse not to have, been able to move on in some ways, and so that's what, but again, it's an individual thing that you're saying, I think.

MY: After four years of dealing only with Nikkei people, then going to City College and dealing with all kinds of non Japanese people, I had no problem. As a matter of fact, I organized a group at City College of San Francisco called the World Peace Group, and we discussed world peace. And I organized that group, and primarily, not primarily, I was the only Japanese American in that group. So I had no difficulty dealing with hakujin or any other people, blacks.

TI: Or maybe, here's a question, in terms of as an observer, do you see scars in the Japanese American community because of what happened? I mean, I think you said that, perhaps not so much for you, but you said you dated Japanese Americans and then dated others, I mean, did you notice...

MY: Amongst my own social circle, no, but then I choose my own social circle. Do I know any Niseis who are bitter about the wartime experience? I'm thinking of my immediate group of people I knew at Tule, they resumed their life, if I could say resume, after four years in their own way, and I don't see any bitterness in Gori's part, Hideo's part, Nakamura's part, and these are quite different people. One is a Kibei, one was a young thirteen, fourteen year old kid, Gori, Nakamura, Sue, couple of years older than me, and they seem to have developed their own lifestyle, which was no particular bitterness.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.