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MN: Now I know you said the story of the veterans had already been done and you wanted to go to the stories that haven't been told yet. How did you go about picking who to include and who not to include?

CO: Well, you know, it's not so easy to get people to talk, especially to get into things rather than giving us superficial stuff. So I would ask around. We had Aiko and Michi and all kinds of people like that, Michi Weglyn, sort of being sources for us. I knew quite a few of those people ahead of time, but let's see now. Well, I knew Jimmie Omura, and how did we meet Mits? Oh, we knew Art Hansen and Art Hansen knew a lot of these people. So we had to get people who were willing to tell their stories. So asking around those who were willing, we picked. And of course, not everybody got into the film, but anyway, we recorded quite a few interviews. And I learned a lot about things like it's different from literature because you have to have people who spoke clearly enough and pointedly enough about information and all that, that you could keep it. Now, we went all the way out to Arizona, took one other crewperson, anyway, we went and spent several days with Morris Opler, who was one of the resident anthropologists at Manzanar during the whole thing. And he was a person who was very knowledgeable. But at that point, he was pretty old, and he was under a lot of medication. So we'd ask him a question, and he'd start out but then he would start to fade, and his head would nod. We didn't use any of it because the stories were interesting, but you know, he just... well, he just sounded like he's half asleep so we just couldn't use it. [Laughs] That was a disappointment, but anyway, you learn as you go along.

And then, of course, you have to choose what you're going to use out of several hours of interviewing. So you had to make your choices about, all right, what ideas, what issues, what themes are really the basic part of this story? And no matter how interesting all this other stuff is, and most of the interviews were really fascinating. You know, like interviewing allows you to be nosy and you can ask people all these things and you hear all kinds of stories about their childhood and their families and all that. So it's pretty rich, but we really had to choose. That's what this documentary business is about, is about eliminating and eliminating and choosing and just the stuff that really make your points for you. So that was a hard lesson to learn. It's like there was so much that was equally interesting it seemed. Like, okay, we did not include Hirabayashi, Yasui and Korematsu because it felt to me like if we go into that, it's such a big story that within our short timeframe, we couldn't do it justice. So we didn't include that, and I think when we were working on a revision or something, we just put in a plaque about the lawsuits and all. So that if anybody was really interested, they could look it up. Because that's a whole other big issue, and other people have already made, or have subsequently. Steven Okazaki and the one on Korematsu, other people have covered those subjects.

MN: Now, the people you interviewed are talking about topics that really have never been talked about publicly: draft resistance, "no-no."

CO: Questionnaire, yeah.

MN: Did you have a very difficult time getting these people to go on camera?

CO: Well, we chose people who were willing to talk. So no, it wasn't difficult. And we decided not to do any of the veterans all that because that, again, would take the story off in another direction, a large chunk of it. And I know people have the impression that we're anti... well, we are anti-JACL, I admit that. But we're certainly not anti-442nd or any of that. It's just that, again, that's such a huge story and can't cover everything. So we let that go. Besides, they'd already had other big documentaries made about them and everything, so that story is out there.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.