<Begin Segment 16>

BF: I've heard from a number of people at this conference how important in many different ways those commission hearings were -- now I'm talking about the ones for the Nikkei population. What do you think, sort of, what impact did those hearings have on the Nikkei community?

WM: Well, one example that I can cite to you that I think is illustrative, it that a number of the witnesses, after they testified, stayed around to listen to other people testify, with tears streaming down their face. And that may be understandable, but when they come back the second day, and the third day, and listen, you know that something is going on here, inside. And with tears coming down, you know that something is going on. I remember one witness in particular in San Francisco, her name is Noriko Bridges, I think it is. She's married to, I think she's the wife of Harry Bridges who's now deceased. I think Harry Bridges was a union leader of the International Warehousemen and Longshoremen, something like that, in Hawaii. Harry Bridges was, whether justifiably or not -- I think unjustifiably -- was considered to be a communist party member. I don't know whether it was true or not, but who cares, that's not my problem. But anyway, she came to the hearings, and she sat through and I remember her just crying. And she came back the following day. And it was a kind of a washing away of pent-up feelings, I think.

BF: Does this level of, gosh, the level of what people were revealing and the volume, the amount of people who came and were willing to talk this openly -- did that surprise you?

WM: Yup. It did surprise me, because the culture, which is part of my culture, the Japanese culture, forgetting about the country of Japan, I have a culture which is Japanese and also American, of course. And there is a merging of the two somehow. But in the Japanese culture, at my stage of life anyway, you did not talk about weaknesses in the family. If you had problems, you kept them to yourself. If you had a sister who was mentally deficient slightly, you didn't let the people know, although the community would probably find out about it. If you had a brother or sister or any member of the family with a touch of tuberculosis, you did not reveal that. They would go away to say, Arizona for awhile on a "vacation," with quotes around it, come back and heal and back in the community. But you did not reveal these kinds of things. And you didn't do that because you wanted to, a family should be strong. If you want to have your daughters marry well, you want to send a healthy woman, because if you're weak, they don't want you. And all these shibboleths went by the board when they testified. They testified about a mother who was mentally ill and spending time in that mental institution. They testified about a sister who had tuberculosis and therefore was kept in a place in Oregon. And this is an actual situation, the girl the witness testified that she had heard that her, she... mother had been -- died in Oregon, while they were in camp in a so-called assembly center. And when they got word that the mother had died they sought permission to go visit... I'm sorry, the mother had not died, the mother was seriously ill, had taken a turn for the worse. So they tried to get a permit from the WRA to go out to Oregon to visit the mother before she died, or see how bad she was. By the time they got there, the mother had died. And nobody told, nobody knew where the mother was. So, you know, how tragic can it be for... you know I think about stuff like that, and I do cry. Just the rage and the anger for what they did. Excuse me. [Cries]

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.