<Begin Segment 25>

TI: So Emi, we're coming to the end of the interview. We've already been two and a half hours, so I just want to ask you, this has been an incredible story, and you've just had so many experiences and your family lost so much during the war.

ES: Oh, they just...

TI: And it's, I guess I'm trying to understand what lesson can we take away from your story and your life, and if you were to talk to maybe your great-great-grandchildren, they'll see this in maybe fifty years, what kind of message, I mean, when they listen to this story, what kind of message would you want them to know in terms of...

ES: You know, this country is getting, this whole world is getting to be so homogenized that you just don't, can't think of things that's gonna be like what we went through. It's gonna be so different. Like in your, like Microsoft and all these different things that's coming up, I don't know where all, people are gonna be people.

TI: So why would it be important for, say, your ancestors fifty, a hundred years from now to know this story? Why do you think that's, why would be important for them to listen to this story?

ES: I think it's because, well, I like history and I think that it's important that we read history from way back, from like 1500s, see what they went through. And we want something in our story and only way you can have it is in, well, we get it through books, but now I think you're gonna get it from every other way rather than you have to read. You can see it through a lot of other ways.

TI: Yeah, I agree. There're gonna be all these different ways that these stories will be told, but, but the story itself, the story of what happened to you and your family during World War II, why would it be important for kids today to know this story?

ES: Well, I'm, I just kind of... you know, things are changing so fast that, I know from my great-grandchildren that what they're doing now is way beyond what I comprehend. It's hard for me to see what they're doing. I don't know, but I really think that it's good that we have this history behind us that they can read. I have a great-grandson who's eight years old and he says to me sometimes, he says, "Grandma, what did you do when you were six years old?" And I told him I was at home in a Japanese farmhouse with no toilet, inside toilets and no running water, and I said, "But we got along okay." He says, "Really?" He's just amazed. And he says, "Did you have TV?" And I says no way, we didn't have TV until I was married, and that was 1940.

TI: But then what you also had was this rich community that you grew up in, in Brooks, Oregon.

ES: I think we were probably the richer than some of the people, because we had electricity before a lot of other people. We had telephone quite a bit sooner than a lot of people. About twenty people used to come and use our telephone.

TI: No, I think it's, again, I think your great-grandson will learn so much by these stories.

ES: Yeah, I think, yeah, he's interested in a lot of little things that I told him.

TI: This is good. So Emi, thank you so much for doing this interview.

ES: I hope it helps.

TI: This was a wonderful interview.

ES: Well, I hope so.

TI: Thank you so much. I'm glad we did this.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright &copy; 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.