<Begin Segment 22>

BN: Well, maybe one thing that we didn't talk about at UCLA was JARP, and I was wondering if you had any...

RD: Yes, I had an unhappy experience with JARP. I was asked to join --

BN: Japanese American Research Project.

RD: Yes. I was glad to... on the board, and there wasn't a hell of a lot going on, but I was there. And then the second or third meeting, they had to deal with a request from an assistant professor with a Japanese name who I'd never heard of who wanted to see some materials for research. And the decision was, and we were to ratify it, that he not be allowed to do so. And I said, "That's wrong," etcetera, and I was the only one who thought that way. I didn't resign in a huff, but shortly thereafter I said, "I'm kind of busy, I don't have time for this anymore." And they knew what it was. The man's name was Akira Iriye, by the way. But he was an unpublished professor at that particular time, so it wasn't that I was deferring to someone, but it was... I've never thought that history and historical evidence could be private property, at least not as far as a historian is concerned. Your life is your private property, but once those papers are out there, and somebody supposedly devoted to research has them -- and you don't give everything you've got to somebody, but when someone comes, you've got a big collection, someone comes and wants to see it, you can surely set down certain ground rules. But it's not your property. What's important is making such materials generally available. And that's always been a touchstone of my work. I've never denied a legitimate request for assistance and information. I mean, some people want you to write their books for them, and that's something else again. But I don't care if it's a high school student -- and I get high school students, particularly since there have been History Days. And some of them are really very good and very grateful. Some of them are not, but nevertheless, that's not my... not only it's my philosophical thing, it seems to me that my higher education was all done on public money. And I've been supported by public money, and therefore in some ways I'm almost a public utility. So that's important. Oh, yeah, it's clear there are people who wish I'd never written, but that's something else again. I've never run into what hakujins writing African American history have run into. They tell me, they get told that, "This stuff is for white folks and this is not for white folks, so we don't have any of it." If anybody has felt that, I haven't felt it. In fact, in some cases, I felt that many people were more comfortable talking to a hakujin historian than they would to a Nikkei. That may be not true, but...

TI: Do you have any thoughts about that, Brian?

BN: I think that's definitely true. Because any other Japanese American is gonna have some familial ties or connections or... I think it's safer in some ways to talk to someone who doesn't have, who's coming from the outside.

RD: I don't know, but I had that distinct feeling.

TI: Well, good. We went long at this last session, but this was excellent. So, Roger, that concludes our first interview. So I think it sets a good foundation for us going forward. So, thank you.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.