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MN: Now I'm gonna change the subject, and I want to ask you, when was the first time you shared with other people about your camp experience?

BT: My past experience?

MN: Your camp experience. When did you talk about your camp experience to students?

BT: Oh. I volunteered at the Japanese American National Museum in 1999, I think. Right after, right after they opened this new pavilion they needed more volunteers, so they put up a big push on that, so I decided to give it a try.

MN: But prior to that, prior to that, at your grandson's --

BT: Oh, yeah, okay. When my grandson that was living up in Portland, when he was in the fourth grade, he must've told his teacher that Grandpa and Grandma is coming up to visit, so the teacher called my daughter up and says, "Do you think that they would," we would share our experience in camp. So she called me up and, "Oh, sure," I says. So on the given date, when we went up there, we start, I start talking to the kids. The kids ask different kind of questions, asking, "Did you play baseball?" This or that. And then this one little girl, she kept raising her hand, so I says okay, I asked her, she says, "Why did you put, why did they put you in camp?" Says, "You didn't do anything wrong." And I didn't know how to answer that. I looked at the teacher, the teacher's looking back at me smiling. So the only thing I could think of was, when there's a war people do things that they normally would not do. And this girl says, "Well, that's not fair." That really touched me.

And I think it was 1999 Manzanar pilgrimage, the Manzanar Committee wanted all the camps to make one of these banners, the samurai banners, it was twenty inches wide and five feet tall. So I had one made for Gila and wanted to take it to the pilgrimage, and so happened that Senshin Buddhist Temple put out a bus, and I'm a member of the Senshin, so we were lucky to get a seat on there. On the way to Manzanar we stop at city of Mojave, potty break. And after we got back on the bus, start going, the Reverend Mas says, "Does anyone want to share their experience of the camp?" Nobody made a sound. Nobody made a sound. And my wife and I were sittin' up in the front, so he hands me the microphone, so I get up and talk, this and that. And I give the phone back, and he says, "Okay, anybody else?" Nobody moving, so he gives me the microphone back again, so I talk some more, and it felt good. And then got some feedback that people enjoyed the talk, so when this, when the National Museum put out a call for volunteers I told my wife, "Well, I'm gonna volunteer. I have a story to tell." So we both volunteered, but she volunteered to work in a non-public area. She was more people person than I am, but she didn't want to be a docent.

MN: You're also really active with the Gila Camp Reunion Committee. You even chaired it. You volunteer at the museum, you helped out in the Ruth Mix documentary. Why is it important for you to be involved in all of this?

BT: I think it's sort of giving back, and also somebody has to spread the word, to remind people what happened. It's, it's not that, I'm not crying in my beer, you know. But it's just that, let the people know that this could happen. It must not happen again. So that's what got me...

MN: When you were growing up, did you know what civil rights were?

BT: No. I don't ever remember coming up, the topic coming up in school. We knew about the situation with the blacks. Well, at that time I didn't know how badly they were treated. You hear stories, but, you know.

MN: What did you think about when people started to talk about redress?

BT: You know, I really didn't think that it would go through, especially with the money. I went to one of the meetings. But luckily it went through. I was surprised that it did, but you got to hand it to these people that really pushed it.

MN: Was your mother alive to receive the redress benefit?

BT: Yeah, she was alive. Let's see, the redress bill, Civil Liberties Act, was signed on August the 10th of '88, and my mother passed away on August the 23rd of '88. So the, the government -- there was three of us, I had one brother and one sister still -- the government split the check in three and gave us each a third of my mother's money.

MN: Any other thoughts you'd like to share with us? I've asked my questions.

BT: No, that's, I guess that's about it, yeah.

MN: You're good?

BT: That's good.

MN: Okay.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.