<Begin Segment 11>

BF: And do you feel during the time that you served as a commissioner that you did face some of that criticism and scrutiny, or was it better than you thought?

WM: If they did -- well, no, there was a lot of pressure brought on me by some people. They wanted individual payments, there was no question about that, they made that well-known. But I had decided early on that what I've got to do, that it is... I have to decide what I feel right. If I make mistakes -- it's too bad, I'm only human. But I've got to make my own mistakes, I can't let other people make my mistakes for me. So I finally decided, I'm going to have to make my own decisions, according to my own conscience and judgment. It's the only way I can do it, and if I'm wrong, I'm wrong. And if people want to shoot me, they'll have to shoot me.

BF: So you had to, I assume, sort of separate yourself as a commissioner, from yourself as someone who was interned and...

WM: Yeah. Hard to do, though, because I knew that life in camp was not fun. That I knew for certain, no matter who said what. I knew that was inappropriate.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.