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TI: So this is where I kind of want to pivot to this next part. Because it now makes more sense to me, I think. Twenty-six years ago when we had a conversation about... and I told you, I said I'm going to start this project to collect the stories of the Japanese American experience and focus on the World War II experience. And this was something, this was 1995, 1996, and you were, like, sixty-nine years old. And so a lot of your friends were in their seventies. And I said, "Well, so Dad, wouldn't this be great to collect all these stories because they're still fresh in people's minds?" And I could tell, you were kind of hesitant about me doing it. Do you remember that conversation?

VI: Yeah. First of all, when you started, I think I told you, you missed a great part of really, of people that were affected and knew about the relocation.

TI: Some of the older...

VI: Professional people.

TI: Older Niseis that had already passed away.

VI: And they were so close to the Isseis. If you're going to tell a story, that's the story that was really important.

TI: And you were talking, maybe like Jimmie Sakamoto, those kind of people that were older Niseis?

VI: Yeah.

TI: Right.

VI: A good example is when they had the Courier League. That was the old group.

TI: Because Jimmie Sakamoto was like an older Nisei. So there was that part, that you said I was late in terms of starting this, but there was more, too, you told me, too.

VI: Yeah. You know, people just don't realize happened as far as I was concerned. Where the war broke out and we were in the movie theater, my dad even brought us home. Japan had just attacked Pearl Harbor. Our parents were Japanese nationals. What was going to happen to us? I mean, at that time, we're not arguing about we're American citizens, we're part of a family. And our family, we even had Japanese pass... what do they call it?

TI: Passports? Or dual citizenship?

VI: Dual citizenship. So it was kind of hard to start objecting or anything. I mean, you don't do it when your parents' country attacks. So that, if you were there, and we didn't know where we were going or what was going to happen, and Japan was winning the war, what was going to happen. It was kind of hard to say I'm American citizen, so you can't take me. And Japanese, as a whole, were a very docile group, they didn't cause too much trouble, the Northwest was, anyway. So when you start talking about it, when the young people look at that, they say, "If I was there, I'd resist because I'm an American citizen." Well, they weren't there. I mean, it's completely different, the atmosphere we had. I mean, we were willing to go to camp, we were willing to... so you really weren't getting the true story. And nobody has told that part of the story, why. Why didn't we resist?

TI: Well, so was that the reason why you didn't want me to do Densho, because we wouldn't get that story, or that we would get that story?

VI: I don't think people... we were, at that point, want to tell the story.

TI: Right.

VI: So why push 'em to tell the story? That's why I mentioned to you that you were kind of late in getting into Densho.

TI: Right. And the sense was that you're feeling like...

VI: The best stories were the old stories that you missed.

TI: Right. So we missed those, and in addition, maybe Densho would kind of push people a little too hard to talk about something that was maybe difficult?

VI: Right. That older Niseis would have a harder time, I think, talking about it. Younger ones could talk about that, "We're American citizens so we shouldn't be taken." I mean, that's the law. Eventually that came out and we got redress. Which we appreciate, but I don't think a lot of us, as far as the redress is concerned, didn't mean that much. Not as much as the younger people felt that the government should say something. As you go in Japanese, "Sho ga nai," we let it go at that. So that's the reason why I didn't... interesting when you talked to the older people, how they felt. Some were very bitter because they lost their occupation. They were not, it was not as set up to fight for, "I'm American citizen so I shouldn't have gone." They were more bitter because, "I had an occupation or profession that was taken away from me." And that's a different story.

TI: Right, just those individual ones.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.