<Begin Segment 7>

TI: Tell me a little bit about the illness you were going through. It sounds like you had cancer?

JO: Well, I had breast cancer, and my mother had had breast cancer and died of it and I'd taken care of her through it. I wasn't sure I really wanted that much to do with it, and yet, it was early, and they caught it early, and if you're going to have a cancer, I had one of the "desirable" ones, especially if it is caught early. So I was very lucky. And the work continues to be what feeds me. It's eleven years later, and I've been blessed to be here. And I think in part I thought that this was a story -- not that I had to tell it, other people were telling it -- but they were telling it in a historical way. And I wanted to tell a story that had human, the human voice in it. And I felt the letters began to do that.

And so I tried to, when I reached Ellen, which the connections were all there about the reunion, I asked her if I could interview her because I was working on this project. And actually, it was because of her that I was working on the project. And she didn't answer my form that I sent out to various people who answered my questions. She did not want to talk about it on the phone. And when she came to the reunion, she was very happy 'cause I planned a trip to the... we had it in New York, not in Monticello. Nobody wanted to go back. [Laughs] So we had the reunion and we took a class trip to the Statue of Liberty and to Ellis Island. And she said her father always promised to take them there but they never made it, so she felt that she had fulfilled his wishes. And that was when she spoke about her father a little bit, but again, she told me nothing about the fact that she had been in Poston. And that's, of course, where all of Miss Breed's children were, but they were in Poston III.

And so when I came to California after my treatments were over to do my research and my interviews, I went to visit Ellen, who lived in Central Valley. [Interruption] And for the first time she told me that the reason they never spoke of Poston and of the past was that her father told them they were not to speak of it, that the past was the past, and they were to think about the future. And in a way I related to that because of my own family's view of the past. But that she felt that she should tell me because I was writing this story of the camps and of Poston in particular. And so her story got entwined with Miss Breed's children.

[Interruption]

TI: I want to go back. So after you're finished with your treatments and you did the research, tell me, besides doing interviews, what other type of research you did.

JO: Well, we went to Berkeley, and I had been in touch with the librarians at Berkeley, and one of them said, a research librarian said every time I wrote him I would say, "Is that there?" because I didn't know how to use a finder at that point. I really was a novice in that regard. Snowden was also helping me at the Japanese American National Museum. She was still there, I think, or she may have left there by then, but she was in touch with me. She felt a kinship about this and about Stanley Hayami as well. She had also digitized the diary so that she knew his story as well, and she encouraged me to go on to that, and I sort of put that on a back burner. But she would look things up and she would say, "You really need to go to the Huntington. You need to go to this place, you need to go to that place." We went to the National Archives in Washington for some material (to read Redress testimony).

TI: And what was she pointing you to? What was she saying you need to look at? What were the things?

JO: Well, the Huntington had the Red Cross books which were not yet then in print as far as I knew. They were books of essays by students who were in Poston, and they were supposed to go out into public schools and the world, they were going to exchange them, stories about how I left my home, what it was like when I got to Poston, what it's like now, those Red Cross books are now published, and I don't know the name of the book. It's a marvelous book. And they were all written by school age children. And I was looking for writing, hoping I was going to find some written by Miss Breed's children, whose names I knew. Unfortunately they were done in Poston I, I think, and not in Poston III. But the stories were just as meaningful, they were coming from the same places, and they were coming from children of the same ages. And we would have put more of them into the book, but there was no room. [Laughs] It really became a problem of what were you going to give up -- this is always a problem when you're working with documents like this, because everything looks delicious. Everything looks on topic, on the nose, and you want to put it in the book but you can't

[Interruption]

TI: And as you were talking you kept mentioning "we," and I think you meant your husband and you were doing a lot of research.

JO: Right. My husband (...) was semi-retired by then, and he traveled with me and he really did assist me with all of the research. He would duplicate things that I found on microfilm, in fact, he read through the newspapers. If only the Densho had the newspapers online then, I might have saved a lot of time. Because staying in California to do the research was quite costly. But by then I had a commitment from Scholastic to do the book, and I had proceeded with that work with a little bit of support. But it was... he loves to investigate, he's a great student. So he was a great support to me.

TI: Well, you also mentioned earlier that he was in practice a civil libertarian?

JO: Absolutely.

TI: So this story must have resonated with him also.

JO: Oh, yes.

[Interruption]

TI: Now, did he ever talk about some of the Japanese American cases, the Korematsu?

JO: Well, we heard Fred Korematsu (speak) at, we came to an event when I was still doing my research, I think, at which he spoke. It was the last speech I think he gave at JANM, and also many of the resisters were there, and they spoke. That was when I met Yosh (Kuromiya), as a matter of fact. Yes, that was... I have two children who are trained as lawyers, neither of them practicing, but when they heard I was going to hear Korematsu, they understood why I was going to California and why Steve was taking the course, actually, Eric...

TI: Eric Muller?

JO: Yes, Eric Muller was running an institute at JANM, and we came for that. My husband was able to do that, and I was able to do research, so we worked hand in hand.

TI: Oh, excellent.

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