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TI: And so I wanted to kind of talk about that journey to get there. And you mentioned the reunion/protest in Texas. But even before then, I guess maybe the question is, let's talk about your interest in learning more about your family history, and kind of, because I think that set the foundation for later on. So tell me when you first started becoming interested in what happened to your family.

KN: I think I was always interested, but really focused at the march and pilgrimage. It became important because I knew I had to speak out somewhere, and really important when I started to get all the people calling me for an interview.

TI: And let me just, for people who are watching this, this is March 2019, the pilgrimage to Crystal City and then a day later, I think it was a protest at...

KN: Dilley.

TI: Dilley, Texas, which was a family detention facility.

KN: That's correct, yeah.

TI: So you're saying that that really brought it up. So, first, how did you come to actually go to this? Why did you go to this?

KN: Well, a good friend of mine, this is the co-chair of the pilgrimage that's coming up, said that they were doing this, planning for this pilgrimage. And it was nothing official, it was kind of, almost ad hoc, we just got together and I said, "Well, I'd be interested in joining the committee." So after they were, already met three or four times, I joined the committee. And, of course, I knew Satsuki Ina from school way back when, and I know her brother was in my class. So I joined, and then as we got started, I realized I could offer my services to make this pilgrimage a lot better.

TI: You're saying, like your design services?

KN: Creative services, yeah. And so that's kind of where I got deeper into it and then, actually, it was Satsuki who said, "Maybe you want to not use your 'Tony' email anymore." I said, "Good idea," because she knows how deep this is going to get into. So I got my KazTJC, "Tony," "Julio," "Cesar," TJC, at gmail. And that worked out really quite well because now it's easier to keep things separate. And so, but the main reason I wanted to do this is just to get a better sense of what my parents might have gone through. And I was a little disappointed at the March pilgrimage because we spent very little time at Crystal City. We did so many things, it was a short ceremony, it was nice, but off we went. This one that's coming in November, it's actually October 31st through November 3rd, we're going to spend the whole day there. We're lucky to meet, the advance team went last week and met with the officials, and these are all the movers and shakers, the mayor, the school superintendent, the county judge, so on and so on, and they rolled out the red carpet. They are going to be just taking care of everything for us. So the cost alone is going to be substantial for us to put that into other areas. But it really came down to wanting to just get a little sense of what my mom and dad went through psychologically. It was hard to do that in March because it was too short. I hope to do that more, just because there's going to be a lot more Japanese Peruvians, Japanese Latin Americans coming. These are actual internees like myself and we could be sharing our stories. There was a lot of success stories, by the way, I've been in touch with a lot of people. And the key there, again, is just to really get a sense for what our family went through. It's just amazing that they could go through that and then actually make it in life later, and then have all the children do okay.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.