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TI: You mentioned how there was a real favorable response also from the Japanese American community. Back in the '70s, it wasn't common for people in the Japanese American community to use the term "concentration camp."

RD: No.

TI: And I think it's fair to say that if a member of the Japanese American community used the term "concentration camp," they would be, I think criticized for that. How was it for you using the term "concentration camp" during this time?

RD: Well, some people would object, and some people continue to object on principle. Scholars have objected, Alice Yang Murray, for instance, who I know and like and respect, I think doesn't feel comfortable using it. Some Jewish organizations think that the term belongs to them and to them only, which is ridiculous. I've always used it. Roosevelt used it; he knew what he'd done. The first public mention he makes of the camps occurs in a press conference in October. Have I talked about this before?

TI: Yes, you did.

RD: All right, you've got the details. All in all, I have people stand up, quite often they're Jewish, in one or two cases they've been Holocaust victims. And I don't holler at them or anything else, I just say, "Well, that's your opinion, but there have been concentration camps before the Nazis, and after the Nazis, and there's certainly an American concentration camp existent today on Guantanamo." Nothing else you can call that. They're playing at law down there, but counsel, lawyers keep resigning. It's incredible that that place is still there. But that's the most appropriate term, and I think it ought to be used. And by the way, that sometimes stodgy organization, the Library of Congress, had, by the time I published Concentration Camps USA and before, had in its subject headings a whole list of concentration camps, and in runs in one nice, close, alphabetical symmetry, Concentration Camps, United States of America; Concentration Camps, Union of South Africa; Concentration Camps, Union of Soviet Socialist Republics." And then there are other places as well, but those are a nice, tight shot group.

TI: Do you know when the Library of Congress did that, or started using the term "concentration camps"?

RD: I knew that once, but it was that way in 1970 when I got challenged.

TI: Now, there are some who argue that for the common person in the United States, the definition or the thinking of what a concentration camp is was heavily influenced by what happened during World War II in Europe, and that the Japanese American community, by using the term "concentration camp," is sort of playing off that. They're, perhaps, sensationalizing or trying to make what happened to Japanese Americans worse than...

RD: Well, the Japanese American community didn't use it very often, and sometimes complained.

TI: But more currently now.

RD: All right, well, they've been educated. No, it's a foot massager; it goes nowhere, it means nothing. It's only a word, but words do matter. And it's important what you call things, it's important what you call a person. And these things change. We've seen a great change, and a great change for the better, in social attitudes toward race in the United States. And I like to feel that I and others like Harry have helped to change that. I'm not saying we changed it, we helped to change it. Takes an awful lot of people, awful lot of time, an awful lot of changes, and you can't, we still haven't changed everybody. But certainly, I don't have to tell you how the racial climate has changed in this country. And it may be that the language has changed more than the deeper feelings, but if the language changes, the deeper feelings will follow. At least that's my view.

TI: Well, and the case, again, of "concentration camps," I think it is a much more accepted term within the Japanese American community now than it was even ten years ago, twenty years ago. And yet, are you surprised at how slow, or the reluctance of the community? In particular, versus using some of the euphemisms. You still hear Japanese Americans calling them maybe a "relocation center."

RD: Well, I'm not language police. And certainly, "relocation center" is a legitimate term used by the government to obfuscate. But there are some things that... I mean, Puyallup Assembly Center is a proper noun. It's not an improper noun, there was a place called that. There are all sorts of plaques up saying various things, using these particular terms. It's not like the three letter J-word or the four letter K-word, or the six letter N-word. "Relocation center," "assembly center," "internment camp," all of these are real things. I do object very strenuously to anyone calling war relocation camps "internment camps," because "internment" is a legal term, refers to what you do a person who is not a citizen of the country in which he or she is living. Those people can be interned; citizens can't be interned, period. And nobody in the government was calling any of the WRA camps internment camps during the war, that's a postwar...

TI: And where did that confusion come from? Because even I talk to Niseis, and they agree that during the war, they never called it an internment camp. At some point they started calling it that. When did that happen or why did that happen?

RD: It happened because people didn't want to say "concentration camps." In one way, the person most responsible for its continued use is Daniel Inouye. I advised the JACL continually on redress, and we're going to talk about that eventually, but it comes up now, so let's talk about this part of it now. And it was understood that when they finally drafted the bill, they'd run it by me. And one afternoon, I'm working at my home in Cincinnati, and the phone rings and it's one of Senator Inouye's administrative assistants, and she says, "I wanted to send this to you, but they're moving very fast and I'd better read it to you over the telephone. It's a short bill, can you listen?" And I had her read it, and I had her read a couple of paragraphs twice, and I said, "It's all very good except for one thing. You can't call it 'internment' in the title." "Why not?" I don't know if it was that sharp, but she was kind of taken aback. I said, "Because," and I talked for a while, and she was a bright person. She said, "I understand that, I'll explain to the Senator." Called me back the next day or maybe that day and said, "The Senator has already gotten more than fifty signatures as co-signatures. If he changes anything he has to go back, and he's not going to go back to anybody. It'll have to be that. So the Commission became -- and I'm sure if that had not been the case, I don't think it was his personal objection or insistence on the word "internment," it was his personal objection to having to go back and get people to do something they'd already done, and give up a second favor. Because every favor he got had to be repaid in his world. And one thing that I wish you would put in your piece on Inouye, which you didn't, is that he's the first non-white person who became a real power broker in the Senate. He was a Senate oligarch, and he was the only one. The other Nisei have all, some of them have done very well, but not like that. And that's quite an accomplishment.

TI: I will get that to our editor for the encyclopedia. But what you're referring to is the naming of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, CWRIC.

RD: Yes. We'll return to that later, I'm sure, because that was a fascinating experience.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.