Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Diana Morita Cole Interview
Narrator: Diana Morita Cole
Interviewer: Virginia Yamada
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: September 30, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-483-8

<Begin Segment 8>

DC: So I feel a profound... what's the word? I am a witness, that is my role in my family. I am the witness to their suffering, and I've also become a repository of their stories. And so I try to convey this to people who don't understand this because they have nothing in their background that would inform them of this kind of sadness within a family. And I'm hoping that by talking about this, that somehow I can help the society to become more empathetic, so that it would be less likely for people to want to do that sort of thing, to be more accepting of the "other," because there's a chance that you may be that "other" had circumstances been different. And so those are the teaching moments that we can use as a people and as a culture and as a society to raise the level of humanity in our communities and in our nation. And these stories have to go out there, and they have to be heard. And as an old lady of seventy-five, I've taken this on because I feel I don't have that many years to live, and I see the way the world is going, and I think that the Morita stories are very important stories that need to be told. And, of course, it was very interesting to learn about my brother when he was in Minidoka and his job of delivering telegrams.

VY: What was that like?

DC: Well, I actually do a storytelling gig about it, but it didn't start out as a storytelling where I would just be Claude. I first told it at a Minidoka pilgrimage. I was invited to take part in a women's panel, and people were supposed to talk about things that would honor women, and so this is a story that would have honored Mrs. Onodera of Seattle and the sacrifices that she made. So my brother was offered a job by one of his pals who didn't want his job any longer for obvious reasons, and he said, "Hey Claude, you want to use my bike? You can ride all over camp. You can go and even see those pretty girlfriends of yours in Block 19 and 36, you know, Miyoko and Esther." Of course, I made up some of these names. And Claude, who was very athletic and had been deprived of his bicycle in Hood River, had to leave it behind, "Well, I guess I'll take this beat up bike, sure." It was a chance, it was an opportunity. And because they were late arrivals, this was something that he could ride around in and get to know the community better. So he said, "Sure, I'll take it on," but he never had, he never gave a thought to the messages in the telegrams. And so he receives, he's handed telegrams when he goes to the administration office, and one day he's handed one that's addressed to Mrs. Tamaki Onodera of Block 10, Unit 5, or Barrack 5. And he goes to see her, and three of her sons had volunteered to fight. And he goes to see her, and she doesn't open the telegram in front of him. Instead she goes in and gets a glass of water for him to drink, and she asks about him. And he keeps staring at that unopened telegram with this feeling of dread, and enjoying his interaction with this lovely woman, but still knowing that there might be something not so nice in that telegram. And she offers him to rest a while, and then as he's leaving and riding off on the bike, he turns and looks back and he sees her standing on the porch looking down at that unopened telegram, and then she quietly moves inside. And then he decides to go to a block dance wearing his clunky farm boots from Oregon, and he looks into the hall and he sees Esther dancing with her boyfriend and is never able to meet up with Miyoko. And then he finally, I think the last day out he said he began to notice the unsettling number of gold star military flags replacing the blue star service flags in the windows of the barracks. And so then he decides to resign his position as messenger boy. And the story ends that he says, "Even to this day, I remember the sorrowful faces of the women to whom I carried these messages of enormous grief." And to the mothers and fathers outside the barbed wire fences, they received messages from uniformed soldiers, not little boys on bicycles. So he very much felt used. And that story was a big hit when I first read it at the Minidoka pilgrimage. I don't know if you know Bif Brigman? He said that that was the highlight of that pilgrimage, and I had no idea that it would affect him in that way.

VY: That's a powerful story.

DC: It is very powerful. And I think we Moritas have that capacity to feel compassion for others and to carry those stories forward. So I'm grateful to my brother and to my sister, Flora, and to my sister, Betty, for giving me those stories. And yeah, they certainly have enriched my life.

VY: Do you feel like it's working? Like when you do go out and talk to people directly and share these stories, do you feel like they're making an impact?

DC: Well, certainly when they cry and when they come up to me and tell me. I'm hoping for that, there's nothing else I can do. I feel driven by my desire to communicate those stories to people. And I think it's especially important to tell these stories to students, because, of course, students do research and they're interested in their studies. So in that sense, you have a captive audience. With the Nikkei themselves, some of them then want to tell me their stories. And I'm glad they're in my book or in my presentations because I can bring them forward. It's a very sad world out there right now, and I think we need to tell these stories because someone said, who's a storyteller, "Diana, those students that were crying, they were craving that story. They had a desperate need for you to tell them those stories, they need to hear these. So that's why you had that reception." And then someone else used the same term who is also a storyteller, that people really crave to hear genuinely humane stories that are not gussied up by Disney World or by Hollywood, these are stories of ordinary people placed in unusual circumstances, and how you can learn to persevere under those difficult times. And so hopefully these stories will mean something to people and that they will possibly tell others, but I know those students in Chattaroy told their parents, and their parents evidently have talked to the organizer and said, "Wow, why didn't we hear those stories when we were growing up?"

VY: That's interesting.

DC: Yeah, that they also felt deprived. And my husband was there also, and he was telling his story of being involved in the Civil Rights Movement, and twenty children lined up after his talk to shake his hand. And I think that we all are, perhaps, craving people in our lives who are willing to be examples of this sort. You don't go out to be an example, but as a result of behaving in a humane way, you can perhaps be an example for others.

VY: I agree, it's powerful to hear those firsthand stories.

DC: Yeah, so thank you for letting me tell them.

VY: Thank you so much for telling them.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.