<Begin Segment 8>

TI: So I want to go now back to the book, when it came out, what was the reaction to the book when it was published?

JO: Oh, it got wonderful notices, got wonderful reviews. The only criticism was it was too long. But people found the (first-person) human stories that I think that had not been in a lot of other books that spanned so much time. The Japanese American community was most supportive of it. I should go back to some of the interviews that I did. One of the people that I contacted that they put me in touch with at JANM was Babe Karasawa who introduced me to Miss Breed's children. He is a docent at the museum, and he had come from San Diego and been in Poston and knew all of the families who were involved. But he said I couldn't just call, he would make the call. One of the people I tried to reach was Maggie (Ishino) who wanted to know why I was doing those interviews and what were my qualifications for doing it.

[Interruption]

TI: But she's Japanese American?

JO: Oh, yes, she writes a column for the Rafu, and she was one of Miss Breed's children, she was a teenager at the time. And she said that when Babe testified that I was a legitimate writer, and that I had written for adults, I hadn't just written picture books, I had written on parenting issues, and that he'd had enough correspondence with me, it would be all right. So when she arrived, Steve, who had never done any interviews with me, he was running the video camera, and Babe taught him how to use it. We were both so green it was terrible, but Babe gave us our first wonderful interview of his experiences. So he became one of Miss Breed's children in the book, listed legitimately as not one of the correspondents, but one of the children.

And Maggie came in and she said, "You may not run the camera." And then she was not going to speak, and as it went along, she told me some of the most amazing stories that are in the book about how her mother had just given birth to her brother a few weeks before, maybe two weeks before Pearl Harbor. And when they came, the FBI came in the houses and tore people's lives apart shortly after the bombing, that they threw back the covers -- her mother was in bed still recovering from childbirth -- they threw back the covers as if she would have some kind of secret under those covers other than her baby brother. And Maggie also would not put a sticker on her shirt at the museum. She will never wear a sticker or a tag. And when we asked why, she told us the story of how her mother and father and the baby went on the train, but she was left with her little sister and her brothers to go on the second train, and that was taking them to the assembly center at Santa Anita, but they did not know that. They did not know how they would ever find her mother. And the guard that was standing at the train side said to her, "Where is your tag?" And she was holding her baby sister, her little sister -- she was not a baby, she was like five years old -- and she looked down and she realized her tag was gone. And he told her to stand to the side, and Maggie was trembling. She was a seventeen year old girl with three other siblings to take care of, but she was the eldest, she was to take care of them. And ultimately she discovered that her little sister had taken (the tag), the tag fell off, but from that day on she never (voluntarily) wore a tag. While she was in Santa Anita (she) was the one that (washed) the diapers, there were no disposable diapers. She was the one who did the family laundry, she was the one that had to go looking for milk for the baby because her mother was ill.

TI: So she had these powerful stories, and yet, when you went to go interview her, she didn't want to be recorded. I mean, it seemed like there was lot of hesitation on her part. Why was that?

JO: I'm not sure that she had ever told those stories before, or to whom she had ever told them.

TI: But she was willing to tell the story, she just didn't want to be recorded telling the stories?

JO: (We were able to record her voice, but not on film.) I think that she, in the course of events, as we spoke, she came to understand that I was there to make a record of what had happened, and that's why I think what you're doing here is so important. That if we don't make a record, that these stories will be lost as the stories of my youth, of my family's past are lost. My father never told his stories, and we never thought to ask him to tell those stories. And maybe he was too young to be able to tell those stories, but she had a sense -- and years later, after the book came out, the San Diego Library got a grant to have a play written based on the book. And Maggie and her sister were in the audience when many of the words of her story were told through drama. It was not just a recording of the letters, but it was of the events of the oral histories, because we had made a drama of it. And she was a star that night. But it was a very sentimental story, and Ellen and her sister were there, too, as well.

TI: And what did they tell you after the play? I mean, what kind of reaction did they have? Because you essentially brought their stories, brought it out in the open for other people to know. How did they feel about that?

JO: I think they were moved by that. (...) Their stories were going to be shared, that the secrecy or the shame, which I think was involved... from my research it was clear that part of not telling means that if you're accused of something, you might be guilty of something and that was part of why the stories were not to be shared, too. That was part of it. There was also the other part of it, which was the anger which had been buried and glossed over for, I think, for the sake of being able to go on. How else could you go on? So they had made a new life for themselves.

TI: So it was almost like a release or taking a weight off of them.

JO: Right. And I felt that it wasn't... when I was doing the next story, the Hayami story --

TI: Well, before we go there, I want to ask you, when you see that happening, where you've helped people tell their story, and it is this real positive reaction, how do you feel about that? What does it make you feel to see that happen?

JO: Well, as a storyteller, you listen to hours and hours of stories, and then you get some kernel of something and you say, "Ah. That will move. That takes the story forward." You keep looking at the same story and you think you've got them all, but yet, you keep getting a different light, you know. It's how you turn the camera. And that every time you get one of these stories that tells a personal experience, what that felt like, then you feel like you've done something. It has nothing to do with having a bestseller or making a lot of money, it has to do with putting history on a page or on a screen, on an internet screen, because I'm afraid the pages are going the way of the world. But these stories should not be lost, because if they are lost, I mean, we live in a time in which we're seeing that this can all happen as quickly as a snap of the finger.

TI: And just to kind of finish up with Dear Miss Breed, so how's the book doing now?

JO: It continues to be sold; it continues to be read, happily. It continues to have a following. And I still get mail from time to time, and I don't always get mail, sometimes I get a comment on the internet, someone that has read the book and passed it on because... or someone who's doing research and wants to know, "How did you get that?" The people with whom I spoke were all very forthcoming, including Maggie. Ishino, Maggie Ishino. I finally got the name. [Laughs] I-S-H-I-N-O. And that makes me very happy, too, because we like to feel that our own work continues on, or inspires somebody else to move it on to the next place.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.