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TI: But also during this time... so again I'll bring you back to, like, around 1976 when you started at Cincinnati, you talked about taking a trip to the West Coast and that student protest, kind of the emergence of Asian American studies. But it was also a time, Edison Uno was active, but unfortunately he died in '76. But other Japanese Americans were starting to tell the story, or to find out more about the story. And the example would be, in '76, Michi Weglyn's book Years of Infamy was published. Here you have someone who was in the camps, a non-historian, writing that book. What was your sense about that book, and what was your opinion of the book when it first came out?

RD: Well, it was interesting. It was submitted to University of Illinois Press, and I read it. And I thought there were a lot of good things in it, but she didn't know the historical literature very well. And in that particular version, she apparently didn't know about my book. So I sent in a report calling for corrections, and most of those weren't made. She apparently had submitted it to several places at once, and a New York publishing house took it. And it was very important that a book like this had been written by a Nisei. Very important to have been written by a Nisei woman, and it eventually got the acceptance it deserved, but it didn't get it immediately. There was a certain amount of resistance. But it was an important step that certainly was one of the two most important books about the incarceration that had been written by a participant, a victim, survivor. The other, of course, is Farewell to Manzanar, which eventually, in its televised version, was the most influential single artifact in closing the deal on the rehabilitation of Japanese Americans. That had a tremendous impact.

TI: The impact being because it became a movie and it was shown on TV? Or just the fact that it was written, this novel?

RD: The whole thing. But the total exposure is so different. That was a blockbuster; it wasn't just shown on TV. I participated in a number of the -- something we haven't talked about yet -- but shortly after I came to Cincinnati, I began to get requests to help with Asian American filmmakers, and eventually worked very, very closely, for a long time, with Loni Ding, who died with her last film not done, not completed. I don't know that anybody's going to be able to do something with what she's got, because she's got a lot on film. I've seen a lot of what she did have.

TI: And what was her last film going to be on?

RD: Well, it's the third thing on her Ancestors in the Americas is planned as a trilogy. That was the third, the third volume was not completed by her.

TI: But going back to your comment about Michi Weglyn's book, so initially it wasn't well-accepted, you said. What changed?

RD: Well, the world was changing; the Japanese American world was changing; the JACL was changing. When the JACL accepted redress, and at the same put in a president who would make it work, that was a seed change. Cliff Uyeda was a very, very different breed of cat from anybody who's ever been anywhere near the leadership of the JACL. You didn't know him, did you?

TI: No, I didn't, but I've read about him. And going back, he was very... I believe he was a dentist?

RD: No, he was a pediatrician. A pediatrician, and an important one. He directed the Kaiser Permanente infancy programs, pediatric programs in San Francisco, and was important in that. But in addition, he was a humanist. He had all kinds of interest in literature and history in the arts.

TI: Well, he was an activist, too. He got involved in the pardon of Iva Toguri, "Tokyo Rose."

RD: Yes, he did that. He also stood up for Wendy Yoshimura.

TI: Okay, right. So she was, that was the Patty Hearst...

RD: Yes, he was involved in that, etcetera, which was just unheard of.

TI: No, so you're right. Not someone you would predict would be the head of the national JACL.

RD: That's right. And of course he was very important in supporting Asian American Studies at San Francisco State, he gave them money.

TI: I didn't know that part. But I want to go back just a little bit back to Michi Weglyn's book. It sounded like when you reviewed it, there were certain parts that you wish she would have corrected or changed before it was published. Can you recall some of those things?

RD: They were mostly details.

TI: Okay.

RD: The basic message of the book was fine. She didn't understand some of the documents, the meanings, the nuances of some of the documents she read. She didn't understand that the Munson Report contained lines which basically said Japanese Americans can be trusted. But then there was a tag at the end, "about ten percent of them will tie bombs around themselves and blow up bridges," and that's just what the army needed. When Roosevelt got the report, he had that page sent over to Stimson. So that it was a very, very different thing.

TI: Did the two of you ever get together and talk about your books?

RD: Never met her.

TI: Because in many ways, because I was at the University of Washington about during this time, the mid-'70s, taking Asian American Studies. So just having your book and Michi Weglyn's book were perhaps the two most important books, and I'm just curious how the two of you...

RD: Well, I think she's got the basic message right, but it's the difference between the amateur and the professional. And there are just some things that... but it's such an improvement over Bill Hosokawa's book. Bill's a better writer, but, of course, he's very interested in not telling certain stories, and we agreed that he knew that. He knew exactly what he was doing.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.