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TI: And so I'm gonna jump around a little bit now because more recently it sounds like you've been able to connect with Japanese Americans.

MA: Oh gosh, it's just a, it's an affinity that I can't even describe after reading the book.

TI: The Hotel on the Corner...

MA: Right. After reading the book, to be honest with you, I knew it was fiction, but then there was so much real in it, and for instance, there was so much I learned from that that I wasn't even aware of and yet I was a part of it at that, at least for the time it was. And so, but somehow when I walked into that Panama Hotel, and I never had been in it -- I was in a hotel, Akiko, I can't think of her name. Her parents used to manage a hotel on Yesler between Sixth and Seventh, I think it was, and I remember being at her place at that hotel, but when I walked into the Panama Hotel, Tom, it's hard to explain, I just got a really warm feeling inside. I feel like, I felt like I was coming home to somewhere, and yet I had never been in that particular hotel. It was just the atmosphere and something about it that just really, it took me by surprise that I even reacted the way I did. And interestingly, that story that I, a clipping from the Los Angeles paper, I just received that, and so many things just seem to be kind of happening in the area of my feelings about Japanese. And the thing that I love about it is that I do love it and that I am really, I have a good feeling. When I talked to you on the phone even, before I ever met you, one of the gals that talked to me, I don't know if it was your secretary, Naoko?

TI: Naoko.

MA: Yeah. When I talked with her, even on the phone, and talking, I called Pauline, the one who was in her camp, just the other night and, and the fellow you said you know that lived two blocks from me. I called him because I wanted Pauline's telephone number, talked with him for a while and I asked him, I said, "Mas," I said, "did I hear correctly that when we talked before quite a while back that you lived two blocks from me?" And he says, "Yeah, Twelfth and East Alder." And so all of these things kind of, have kind of come together recently, which, and that my cousin would send me from L.A., a clipping that she was taken by and knowing that I had written a story, so yes, I have come kind of home, is what I can call it.

TI: Well I'm so glad we had this opportunity to get this story, because, as we've talked before, I think your perspective is very unique and different. I mean, to actually have you talk about the community, and I've been interviewing people in the community and they've always wondered about people like you. What did, what happened to them? What were their lives like? What were they thinking? And so we were able to capture some of this, so Margie, thank you so much.

MA: Well listen, you can just tell them all that I've told you in any way you can and any way you want, because it's very dear to me.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.