<Begin Segment 15>

TI: I know from my perspective, having you here has been a benefit, and I know for the Japanese American community dealing with things like the National Park Service, a lot of the activity happens on the West Coast. And when these meetings, whether they're a public hearing about one of the camps, having your presence there, I know it just raises the bar just having you there.

RD: Well, and I certainly have a much closer relationship to the Park Service out here than I could have had staying in Cincinnati. Well, I was a little closer to Washington. The other Washington. But certainly if I had not been out here, there is no way I would have been two years ago this October, I believe it was, at a Park Service planning meeting in Oakland at the Park Service's expense. And I would not have met Barbara Takei, with whom I am collaborating and hope to finish collaborating on the next book I'm writing on Tule Lake from that point of view. And she converted me to her point of view on Tule Lake, on most of her point of view. She showed me that what I had believed to be the case would not impact the case at all. I've never investigated Tule Lake in particular, there was no reason to do so for what I did. I accepted the past as the general information, and it was wrong. "Conventional wisdom," as John Kenneth Galbraith liked to say, "is always wrong." I say in the acknowledgements to the Japanese American Cases book, where for the first time I have written about Tule Lake at some length, although I'll do much more so in the other book, but I say there something to the effect that, "She put my feet on the right path," which is very important. And I'm very fortunate that she's willing to collaborate with me on this book, because she is and has been, as you know, the heart and soul of the Tule Lake Committee.

TI: Well, I'm looking forward to the book. And so Roger, this is the fourth interview we've done in four months, and my plan is actually to take a break for about a year or so until we do the fifth, because I really want essentially four books of yours to come out in this interim. We'll have the Japanese American Cases book, we'll have the two-volume book on FDR...

RD: Well, don't be too sure that'll be out in a year.

TI: Okay, well, hopefully in a year. We'll also have the Tule Lake book.

RD: I doubt it. Oh, I'm sure it won't be out in a year.

TI: Well, maybe we'll do this interview in two years. And also another book on Gordon Hirabayashi.

RD: That might well be done a year from now, or at least in press.

TI: But it'd be, I think, a good time to sort of check back in after those books have been published.

RD: Well, okay. But don't wait too long, because you may not have a subject.

TI: Okay, we'll keep tabs. But with that, is there anything else you want to say right now before we end this interview?

RD: Well, let me go back to something you said earlier. There was a time in my mind that I sort of felt that I was really working two streams or keeping two different historical balls up in the air, the Asian American ball and the immigration ball. And I finally came to realize that they were really one ball, and that I do have other writings that are essentially Roosevelt and New Deal oriented, although at the moment, most of them have not been in print, but there's one whole book that's all in that area, and a number of articles and essays and reviews. So I've always had my foot in several historical camps. And that's been a good thing for me, and I almost always have at least two projects going, and I think that has greatly increased my productivity. Because when you get stuck or have difficulty with one project, you have another one to go to. Since I insist on getting end product almost every day of my life, and I manage to do that I'd say three hundred, three hundred twenty-five days a year, I'd say I'm productive of copy. I mean, there are other things I do that are equally productive. And it's not that I don't do anything else. I would imagine that the great bulk of what I write is written between five and ten a.m. It's a great time to work; the phone doesn't ring, I'm usually the only one awake in the house, and you're fresh. I worked at other times, but this is very important. Anyway, I can go on forever. You have other things to do and I'm tired.

TI: Okay, so we'll end here.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.