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VY: Well, thank you so much. Before we wrap up, is there anything else you'd like to talk about before we end today?

NO: Do you have any questions on your list?

VY: You answered so many of my questions. I'm just wondering if there... well, we talked about Tuna Canyon, do you want to talk a little bit about the historical significance of that site and the history of it?

NO: Okay. Tuna Canyon was unknown to me, and I got a phone call to testify at the Land Use Committee. So I went to Densho and I wrote my talk. I said, I didn't want to come and just be a bobbing head, I wanted to know what I was talking about. I was a history major, so I thought, I've got to do this right, so thank you. So we went through this process, and that's already five years ago. But Tuna Canyon is important because it's the flashpoint. It's a world history event, because Pearl Harbor happens, and by nightfall in Los Angeles, people are being arrested by the FBI. In Hawaii they were arrested right away, taken to Sand Island immediately, and there were seventeen sites in Hawaii, one of which is now a national park, Honouliuli, which I visited. And the guard stopped us, but he knew who we were, because he figured we were pilgrims. And he said, "I can't let you in," and I said, "I understand," as I kept walking forward. [Laughs] It was great. It said, "Do not enter," I said, "Okay," keep going, so he has to follow us, right? But anyway, so Honouliuli... so anyway, by nightfall, Sigrid Toye, who is now a board member was at home and she heard sirens, and this is her story. But now she's free to tell the universe what happened. Her father was arrested, her mother was in the living room weeping, and she says, "Where's Daddy?" And this is on our website, we captured it, and this next part is not on their website, she did write a little biography and it says her mother had a hard time because, like all the Japanese mothers and Italian and all this, their bank accounts were frozen, she came from a very prosperous family, and people would spit on her, she wasn't used to that. And there's a lot of people, German people at San Marino and other areas, they were more established than the Japanese because they were here for World War I, even, and incarcerated for that. But she's on our board, and we have many stories that we're still seeking. One very interesting one is Fritz Caspari, he became eventually a diplomat between Germany and other countries. But Yehudi Menuhin, a noted violinist, was a friend of his family. And Yehudi wrote a telegram that he would like to come and play for Fritz and his comrades in the tank. But this came through email, and the son wrote me a letter, Hans, I believe, and he said, "I found you on the website, and my sister lives in Denver, and I have a few things that might be of interest," and he sends this telegram. Well, my son's a violin player, so we knew who this was right away. And the two families involved lived in Los Gatos, and the day that Yehudi supposedly came, there were twenty-seven men in Tuna Canyon. The Japanese were already removed to the camps, or to other Department of Justice locations. We were not able to find any record of him being there. Because usually you have ins and outs, you sign in and out, but it's an amazing story, we found his son in Germany when Sigrid went to Germany, she goes often, she interviewed him there. But the point is that we want to get the story about the Japanese Peruvians, for example, they didn't all come to Tuna Canyon, but some did, like Kiyoshi Hayashi, and so we just have just a little information on him. But there's Marianna Gatto of the Italian Museum of L.A. not too far from here, who has befriended us, and she helps us to find people, it's very difficult because in a book written by Larry DiStasi, it says that we want to take this story to the grave. But we were able to get him to speak when I was in San Francisco, and he found a new name and he shared it with me, the documents.

And in San Francisco there's a place called Sharp Park, and no one knows that that was the detention station, too. Tuna Canyon is not the most important, it's not the biggest, it's just near L.A. And so it's a great opportunity to tell the story, the beginning of the unjust incarceration, Japanese, German and Italians. So what happens next is that we believe that if we grow our exhibit -- and we've done that at ten locations from San Diego all the way to Portland, Oregon, we are educating the public because we do not have access to the land. And so we don't have a home, the San Fernando Japanese community center is our address, and we have our exhibit there, and they supported us wholeheartedly. So the goal is to have a place for people to come to pay their respects in memory of the two thousand people incarcerated there. And to be a point for the camps, because all the camps are very far and they're very distant. We're fourteen miles from City Hall here, it's manageable and it's beautiful. The oak trees never give up their... you know, our exhibit's called "Only the Oaks Remain," because they withstood the fires of last summer, last winter, the floods, they're strong. They have, according to the park rangers for Manzanar, they said they have grown from the tears of the Issei. And at this point they're seventy-seven years plus years old. And so they made shade for the prisoners there. And so Tuna Canyon is a beautiful place. It's not like Poston, which is a desert, it's not like Tule Lake, which is permafrost, it's not like Amache. I've been to many of these places. It's not like Arkansas where the mosquitoes have dinner on people. But it's the location closest to a major city that could tell the story that should never happen again. Germany has been good about telling the things that went wrong, and so it's our opportunity to do something right. And so people could go there and sit under these massive oak trees, they're gorgeous, they don't give up either. And so in our exhibit we have a photograph that I actually took myself with my phone, and so the exhibit has a canopy of trees. So you walk through the exhibit, but you look up and you see the trees. Because one thing I wanted was it would be beautiful, but it's very happy, the exhibit's about 250 pounds per a-frame, which my beloved husband drives a U-Haul and we go with it. And so we've been very fortunate to have a great exhibit company, and they make our brochures. And they also are children of the war because they're from England and they have a story. So you could see how this thing just ripples and ripples and ripples. Because we're really not alone. So what else about Tuna Canyon? So I made my plea, we really want to get as many interviews, it's a healing story because we have a play that's been written about it, done the The Grateful Crane, and it hits all the main points, the knock on the door by the FBI, and the Yehudi Menuhin violin, because he was a great believer in world peace, too. So I think we're good.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.