Densho Digital Repository - David Sakura Interview II

Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: David Sakura Interview II
Narrator: David Sakura
Interviewer: Virginia Yamada
Location: Thornton, New Hampshire
Date: July 22, 2022
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-513

<Begin Segment 1>

VY: Today is Friday, July 22, 2022, and we are conducting our second remote interview with David Sakura, who is located in Thornton, New Hampshire. Running the video production is Dana Hoshide and my name is Virginia Yamada, and Dana and I are both located in Seattle, Washington. So, David, it's good to see you today.

DS: Oh, it's great seeing you again.

VY: So during your first interview, we covered your early life, your time growing up in Eatonville, Washington, you and your family's experience before, during and after World War II, and we left off in 1954 when you had just graduated from high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. So I'd like to pick up from there, but before we move forward with that, there's one thing I wanted to clarify from our previous conversation. And during that time, you described living in a Japanese village that was built by the owner of a lumber mill in Eatonville, Washington.

DS: That's correct.

VY: And I was just wondering, yeah, and I was just wondering if you know if your parents owned the home that you lived in there, or were they renting it from the mill owner?

DS: No. The entire Japanese village was part of a company-sponsored town, so it was company-sponsored housing. And my parents did not own the apartment, but they rented the apartment from the lumber mill.

VY: Okay, so that's interesting. Do you have any idea what happened to the village after the war or during the war, because it was basically completely vacated, I imagine?

DS: Well, yes. The entire village was vacated during the evacuation to "Camp Harmony," and after that, it fell into disrepair, and finally the buildings were disassembled and it's now heavily overgrown. The company itself lasted for a while after the Japanese American workers left the mill, but because of labor shortages and other issues, the company ultimately folded, and now all that remains is the skeletal buildings. But the village itself is completely gone except for, perhaps, one flowering cherry tree that still is hidden amongst the bushes. And we think that that cherry tree was planted by one of the residents, and it's the last vestiges of our home in Eatonville. I should add, however, there is the remnants, or there are the remains of a Japanese cemetery that's part of the Eatonville cemetery. And it's a small piece of the cemetery, but it has the memorial and the headstones of several of the residents of the Eatonville Japanese community, that are buried there. So that's the only remnants of the village.

VY: Well, that's interesting. So does that mean you also have family members probably from your mother's side that might be buried there as well?

DS: No. None of my family members are buried there, but I should add that the romantic in me says that when I pass, it would be appropriate and maybe fitting that my remains be brought back to Eatonville and placed in that Japanese cemetery that's within the confines of the Eatonville cemetery.

VY: Yeah, that's interesting, you still have a very strong connection to Eatonville, it seems, even though you were forced to leave when you were a child and you never really went back after that.

DS: Yes, I think you're right that as a child, I had very fond memories of my time, of my family's experience in Eatonville and of the residents, the Caucasian residents that were so gracious and that reached out to us and made us feel comfortable in their community.

VY: You know, since we're talking about Eatonville, I wonder if this would be a good time -- I wasn't planning to do this -- but if this would be a good time to talk about your dad's, his dispatches and how you were recently able to review them again?

DS: Right, right. With the advent of the internet, one has access to a lot of documents. And it turned out one evening that I came across a very long article about the Japanese American residents in Eatonville that was published by Dixie Walter who was then the editor of the Eatonville Dispatch. And in the very extensive article, she mentioned meeting my father, who had gone back in about 1975 to visit old friends in Eatonville and to drop in to the newspaper office and chat with Dixie, and she was very effusive in terms of describing that visit with my father. And it was something that I found on the internet. And so I reached out to her and she and I started a correspondence, and she indicated that there were letters that were published in the editions of the Eatonville Dispatch shortly after our departure to "Camp Harmony." And these letters written by my father would be published by the editor, Eugene Larin. And I thought it would be very interesting to read these letters, because my father had never talked about the whole internment, relocation, and subsequent disruption to our family. And perhaps these letters back to the newspaper would give me some clue as to who my father was and what he was thinking.

VY: Okay, that's so great that you had that opportunity. Okay, well, thank you for kind of going back a little bit to Eatonville and the earlier days.

<Begin Segment 2>

VY: So now, let's move forward to where we left off before, and now we're in Milwaukee, it's 1954, and you're graduating from high school. And so before we move forward from there, would you mind just sort of placing us in the time period and remind us where you were living, what kind of work your parents were doing, how many people were in your immediate family, and if there's anything you remember about graduating from high school that you think would be interesting to share?

DS: Well, 1954, you're right, I graduated from Washington High School, which is now an inner-city high school in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As I may have mentioned, I was the only Asian American to graduate in a predominately Jewish high school. It was very academically-oriented, and many of the graduates were going on to college. At the time, my father had finally bought his first home in the north side of Milwaukee, and we were actually living in a house owned by my father rather than in public housing prior to the war in company housing. And so this was a major step upward in our climbing up the socioeconomic ladder. My father, at the time, was operating his own radio repair business, which subsequently developed into a radio and television repair business. And my father had, over the years, as a Boy Scout, been very interested in this new technology called radio, and so took a correspondence course and learned how to repair radios. And this was a side activity even in Eatonville where the citizens of Eatonville would come to our community and bring their radios to be repaired. My father worked initially after the war for a large appliance store where he was repairing their radios, and he then branched out in the early 1950s to work on his own as a sole proprietor of a radio repair business. So by that time, I was ready to head off to college, and my brothers, who are several years behind me, were attending also high school. And they had a very productive career in high school where I think my brothers were, one brother was a valedictorian of his class. I think both brothers were presidents of their senior class, and so they were much more gregarious and were much more confident in themselves whereas, in my case, in 1954, I was very reluctant to go off to college. I was given the opportunity or thought about attending the University of Wisconsin and studying chemical engineering, but I was very reluctant to make a move to such a large institution. So I decided to attend a small unaccredited bible college in Dayton, Tennessee, Bryan College, which is still in existence, and it was founded in memory of William Jennings Bryan, that conducted the Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee. So it was a southern, unaccredited bible school that I attended from my first year, and that was the only school that I felt comfortable attending. After one year at Bryan, I then applied to Wheaton College, a more accredited and well-recognized Christian college. And there I went to school for three years, graduated in 1958.

VY: Why do you think you were hesitant to go to a larger college?

DS: That's really an interesting question, and I've thought about that. Because if you look at the arc of my career, it's gone far beyond a small unaccredited bible college. But my theory is that the internment and the disruption caused a great deal of anxiety for change, and just anxiety that was born out of the internment that just couldn't keep me, couldn't really give me courage to move beyond what was familiar. So I couldn't handle uncertainty, whereas my younger brothers, as I mentioned, who, I don't think, remember much of the circumstances of the internment, are less affected by the upheaval and the uncertainty that the internment caused. But my theory, after all these years, was that I just didn't have the self-confidence to push out into an uncertain world.

VY: That's really interesting. It sounds like you were just at that age during the incarceration experience, or just at that age to be influenced enough to have it kind of affect your perspective on the world, and like you said, cause some anxiety, whereas your brothers who were younger were almost protected from that.

DS: Yes, yeah. It's almost as if there was some part of my psyche that had an arrested development. That it prevented the normal development of age five to, basically ten, twelve years of age, and it stems, I think, from the internment experience and uncertainty that we had to live under.

VY: Do you think that's still a little bit a part of you? I mean, I know -- and we'll get to this more later -- but obviously as you became an adult and your career took off and you got involved in some really important movements later on, you either overcame this, or it stayed with you. Either you changed, and you no longer had this anxiety, or somehow you were able to overcome it.

DS: I think it's a combination of both. I think I may have mentioned to you offline that I still have reoccurring dreams of getting lost and not finding my way back to home or family or familiarity. And this is a reoccurring dream that I have in my eighties. So I think the... I don't know what's causing this, but I think the fear of the unknown was so deeply ingrained, embedded in me at this young age, but that's only a theory. But I firmly believe that there were unspoken damages to one's psyche, especially for children that most likely stayed with, in many cases, with the children throughout their life.

VY: Yeah, you're not the first person to say that, who's had that experience of the reoccurring dreams and that anxiety. I think you're right about that.

<Begin Segment 3>

VY: Okay. So let's see. So you have now gone to Wheaton College. So tell us a little bit about your experience while you were at Wheaton College?

DS: As I mentioned to you, my roommate was Jim McDermott, who was the long term, longstanding congressman from your district, I think, in Seattle. He was an undergraduate, he was a pre-med who went on to medical school, and he subsequently ran for mayor of Seattle and lost, but ran for Congress and only recently, within the past several years, retired from his seat in the House of Representatives in the U.S. Congress. But it was at Wheaton where I described the internment experience to Jim, and it was Jim that keeps reminding me of his support for redress, for the efforts of Japanese Americans in general. And I think his district was, had a very large Japanese American constituency. But it was my early conversations with Jim that alerted him to the internment experience.

VY: So that's interesting that you began talking about it, that kind of early stage in your life. And I wonder how you felt about that. It sounds like you were able to talk about it with someone who you considered a friend, and so did that feel like a safer way to...

DS: I think so, but once again, I was one of the very few minorities in an all-white Christian, evangelical Christian school. So there have been long periods in my life where we are, I'm an only minority in a large group. And it's part of maturation, I think, how to manage that, how to accept your role in society. And it was part of exploration of other opportunities. And so when I graduated from Wheaton College, I was still uncertain as to whether I should go or what I should do. Many of my colleagues that majored in chemistry as I did, went off to graduate school and finished very quickly, their degrees, and went on to develop very illustrious careers. Whereas in my case, I had a string of failures in graduate school where I went to three different graduate schools until I finally was able to complete my doctorate. But I think, again, this lack of confidence, this sense of uncertainty or managing uncertainty, and lack of... well, not lack of direction, but lack of confidence led to a string of successive failures. And again, if I were to develop a theory of why I lacked so much confidence, I think the major event in my life was, again, the internment experience.

VY: It's interesting to me to hear you describe yourself as someone with a lack of confidence and having a string of failures, because I think anybody that knows you today probably would be surprised by that. I'm surprised by that. And I wonder if what you're calling a string of failures maybe were more, kind of, milestones that you got through to kind of get you to your next step in life?

DS: Well, I wouldn't call it milestones, I would call it just growing up, maturation, becoming a full-fledged adult. And I think I best describe myself as having an arrested development. And finally, after, what, eighty, over eighty years, I feel much more like a fully developed person.

VY: It's kind of an ongoing process, isn't it? [Laughs]

DS: Well, I think everybody goes through that. But it's taken me a long time to develop into a person.

<Begin Segment 4>

VY: Well, okay, so after college, so how long were you in college? When did you finally get to the point where you were able to graduate, and what degree did you graduate with?

DS: Well, I had a string of incompletes, let's say, at a small state college in northern New Mexico. Whereas my classmates went off to Cal Berkeley and other schools, I went to New Mexico Highlands University in the backwaters of northern New Mexico. And it certainly wasn't Cal Berkeley, but it was a turning point in my thinking and my experience, because I was finally, in the real world, away from home, away from the confines of a religious upbringing. That was, I never did finish my master's program. I then went on to the University of Oregon where I did qualify. But I subsequently got married and decided that the University of Arizona would be a good place to restart. And because I now had a family, I really had to focus as my last chance to get my doctorate in biochemistry which I did receive after six years in 1970.

VY: So it was around the 1970s, is that when you started your family, or was it before then?

DS: Well, Dan, my firstborn son, who was born in 1964, and Peter was born in 1968. And by 1970 I had finished my doctorate and had received a postdoctoral fellowship at Brandeis University in Boston, and so we moved to Boston.

VY: That was in, sorry, that was in 1970?

DS: In 1970.

VY: Okay, that you moved to Boston?

DS: And I spent two years as a postdoctoral fellow and then joined the research faculty staff at Harvard Medical School, and conducted research in the neurosciences for about eight or nine years, at which time, during that time, I was divorced and began to think about making a career change. So in 1979, just about the time of JANE, I enrolled in the School of Public Health and began taking a program in Health Policy and Management.

VY: Sounds like, I think a lot of things happened that year for you.

DS: It continues to be a, not a tale of woe, but a series of major life-changing events. But at about the time of 1979, when I decided to make a career change and move out of academic research and look at what I felt, well, I characterized academic research as being a high-risk, low-reward career for me. And so I decided I wanted to retrain myself so I could pursue a career of high risk, high reward.

BY: That is very interesting to hear you say that. As someone who entered adulthood with all that anxiety and not wanting to take risks, and now you were kind of flipping the narrative a little bit.

DS: Well, flipping the narrative a bit, but I should add that in 1974, my mother passed away. She died when she was quite young. She was about sixty-four years of age, and she, at the time I was married, we had two children, my mother, very ill, came, and she passed away. And I think about the trajectory of her life and the impact of the internment, and she never spoke of the internment as did my father, hardly ever spoke again about the internment. But I think the loss of my mother, who now, in retrospect, I was very close to, because as you recall, my father said I had, I was the head of the family and I had to take care of the family. So the loss of my mother was really a major blow. And my father subsequently passed away a year later, so there was major losses in my life. And so all traces of the internment experience had disappeared. So moving on, I had gone through this career change, or was in the process of changing my career from a research associate to who knows what. And then JANE came along. And JANE came along at the same time I was re-creating myself.

<Begin Segment 5>

VY: Now, when you say JANE came along, did JANE already exist or were you sort of part of the...

DS: It just sort of appeared. And so I was ready for change. Had gone through some personal difficulties, losses. I had separated and divorced from my family, a new career, and so I think by that time, I was about forty, I was ready for change. And in 1979, '78, '79, a group of students, somehow I contacted them, or they contacted me, and introduced me to the concept of JANE Japanese Americans of New England. So that ends one chapter of the trajectory of my life before, during and after the internment.

VY: So at this point, as you become a member of JANE, I guess, is it correct to call you a founding member of JANE?

DS: Yeah. I hate to have any kind of attribution of having, you know, in a typical Japanese cultural perspective, not standing out because you'll be knocked down. So I don't want to give myself an attribution such as a founding member. But I was involved with a group of students from Harvard who had this vision of a group that would reach across the aisle, would reach across the generations, and provide a network, a community network of Japanese American students.

VY: How many students were in this group?

DS: [Laughs] Not too many. I think three or four. It was a small group, and then others began to, the group began to coalesce and become part of the group. But the group, JANE, itself, was no more than a dozen people with a couple of other people who had an interest in this, sort of, pan-Asian group. But it was largely students from Harvard and elsewhere, and some other people from the community. And the purpose was to provide a network, a social network, an issues-related network of Japanese Americans that could address certain issues. But it was, the focus was largely... the focus was largely to provide a basis for meeting other Japanese Americans and to have social activities. So when you read the minutes of JANE, you'll see a major emphasis on picnics and other social activities.

VY: I see. So it was really more a group of individuals who... it was a social group, but with certain conscious, there was a consciousness there about issues related to being Asian American or Japanese American that you all wanted to explore.

DS: And reaching across the community to provide, and reaching out to other Asian groups, it would be sort of a clearing house of pan-Asian activities.

VY: I see.

DS: So what kinds of activities did you do?

VY: Well, as I mentioned to you -- and I thought about it since our last interview -- there was some, there interest in the internment. And I don't remember too much about the picnics and the other social activities, but I do remember getting up in one of the JANE meetings and talking about my and my family's experience in the internment. Because I think there was a growing interest on the part of these students and of the Sansei on the Japanese American internment. So I do recall getting up and talking about it at some point. And I felt like an echo of the Vietnam era and protests, or the Black Power, Black protests of, well, using some of the phraseology of the Vietnam protest movement of consciousness-raising, of education teach-ins and the like. And somewhere in my memory I recall thinking that it is important to begin talking about the internment, and to let, to teach-in the public about what happened during the internment of Japanese Americans. But if you read the minutes of JANE, there are picnics galore and there are meetings in people's homes, and food was also a big component. That there would be a planning meeting or a monthly meeting, but always food would be served. And some of the supporters of JANE were Nisei. So the Sansei students had this idea and were gradually joined by some Niseis who would open their homes for our JANE meetings, and that was in the spring and summer of 1978. So that was JANE. It wasn't internment, personal experiences, personal recollections were not a big issue, but it was discussed.

VY: It also sounds like, even though there was primarily the social activities going on, that was also kind of a way to... well, it also sounds like, during this time, this kind of spark was in you. When you got up and you talked about your experience, and I wonder if that was the first time you really started thinking about how important it was to continue doing that. And I wonder if that was kind of percolating in you during all these other activities, just always there in the background.

DS: I think there was a, when you're around students, there was a high degree of enthusiasm. There's no cynicism, no elderly voice saying you can't do it. So I think I was sort of, as a old Sansei, I was the oldest Sansei around, and I think I was swept up by this enthusiasm, and by the can-do, the optimism of the students. But there were also Nisei, some of the well-established Nisei of the community, were also involved in hosting some of the JANE meetings. But I don't think I really thought too much about, or thought too much about speaking, it was almost spontaneous talking about...

VY: I was wondering how everybody responded to you talking about that experience?

DS: I think people listened to it, and maybe it was the first time. It could have been the first time they actually heard someone speaking of the internment from a personal basis. Because it's highly likely that their parents, like mine, never spoke of the internment experience.

VY: Did any of the Nisei that were part of the JANE group, did they ever talk about their experiences?

DS: Not really. I can't recall at that point Nisei members of JANE talking about their internment experience. And most of the Nisei were a bit older than I was. So I'm sort of the bridge, that was a bridge in between two generations.

<Begin Segment 6>

VY: Okay, so now you're in JANE. At this point in time, how many members do you think there were? Like around a dozen?

DS: Yeah, about a dozen. You have to remember that in New England, unlike the West Coast, there's really a small, there was a small population of Japanese Americans and largely affiliated with the universities and colleges. In the greater Boston area, someone mentioned that there were over five hundred, six hundred thousand students in the greater Boston area. And it's a citadel of education with three medical schools and lots of colleges and universities and junior colleges. So there's a huge student population in Boston.

VY: And at the time that you were there, during your time at JANE, I imagine, like you said, there weren't a whole lot of Japanese Americans or Asian Americans in that area. Can you talk a little bit about what that was like? Because you've also talked before about having a certain responsibility of being the only person of color in the room or in a group. Now you've joined this group where you're all people of color.

DS: Yeah. I just thought of that today. It's the first time, it was the first time in my life, other than living in Eatonville in the company housing with a hundred other Japanese individuals, this is the first time I spent any amount of time working with, affiliating with a Japanese group of people. It was different, and working with people that look like yourself. But at the same time, very articulate, very smart, just an amazing sub-group. But the fact that we were all of the same ethnic background was unusual, and in some ways disconcerting, but in other ways, really comfortable that we seemed to have a camaraderie that other individuals, the white community, may not understand. And I think many of the, many of us in that group had the feeling of maybe even coming home with... yeah, that we are finally together.

VY: Yeah, that sounds like a very powerful experience after spending, maybe it was a couple of decades, really, just always being the only person of color most of the time everywhere you go.

DS: Uh-huh. I sometimes think about the analogy about... the analogy of being a salmon... wow, you really triggered a response, so I'm going to take a little break.

[Interruption]

VY: So before the break we were talking about how, from the time you left Minidoka and settled in your new home in Milwaukee until the time you became a member of the group JANE, in the late '70s, so a span of over thirty years, you were usually the only person of color in the room for many instances. And as a member of JANE, this kind of changed.

DS: You're right. It changed in a really dramatic way. I found myself working with individuals who are non-white, who are actually, they looked like me. They had the same sort of singsong Japanese intonations like me, where you always end up with a quizzical question rather than a declarative statement. There's always this tentativeness. But what was really exciting is that these were really, really smart people, and had largely come from the West Coast. And so they brought a West Coast sensibility to us Easterners. And I found that really, really exciting.

VY: And how long did JANE exist, as a group?

DS: Actually, in retrospect, not very long. Because we organized in maybe the spring/summer of 1978, had a number of meetings, and in fact, some of the meetings were held at the home of a Nisei in the community. And the Nisei in the community, by and large, were those that were involved with JANE and JACL, were really pillars of the community. They were professionally trained, well-recognized in their profession, fairly well-off living in neighborhoods. And so, once again, they represented the Nisei generation of achievement, either academically or in business or in the arts. And so it was a interesting group of student activists and well-established Niseis that came together initially with JANE and then subsequently with the JACL. So we began to organize in 1978 and 1979, and the organization, if you read the minutes, dealt with a lot of social activities. But as I mentioned we had a consciousness-raising activity describing the internment experience. But then in the winter/spring of 1979, one of the several members of JANE brought to the group the idea of re-forming the New England Chapter of the JACL. And several individuals come to mind, including a student from Harvard, Alex Kimura, as well as Glen Fukushima, who brought the idea to the JANE group and arranged to have an informational organizational meeting in February of 1979. And Ron Ikejiri from JACL came, gave his description of the benefits of the JACL, joining the JACL, and I think the incorporation or the restart of the New England Chapter of the JACL began in February of 1979 with this meeting with Ron Ikejiri. But I think it's amazing that the students initiated this transformation again. And it was some key individuals that continued to provide their support in the ongoing efforts of the JACL including the redress.

<Begin Segment 7>

VY: Is there any more you wanted to say about the people you mentioned? Or are there others that come to mind at the moment who were influential at this period of time?

DS: I think it was Alex and Glen Fukushima who continued, who brought the concept together. I'm not sure where they got the idea, what the origins of the idea came, but there was this organization, JANE, that seemed to provide the framework for the next step forward and that was the reestablishment of the JACL.

VY: And you say reestablishment, because it's my understanding that there was a JACL chapter there many years ago, like in the late '40s, but it was dormant for a long time.

DS: That's right, dormant for a long time. And what's interesting is that they're in a discussion revolving around the formation of the reformation of the JACL. There were some naysayers who still held some hostility toward the organization because of its support or non-support during the internment.

VY: Were those strong voices? Were those voices in the group itself of JANE?

DS: Yes. I can think of one individual who was quite vocal about the sense of abandonment by the JACL during those difficult years during the internment. But I think that was the, perhaps, the only strong voice in opposition for rejoining the JACL.

VY: Can I ask if that person was, what generation that person was? Were they Nisei?

DS: He was... he's a Nisei. He was a Silver Star, he was a member of the 442nd, fought bravely in Italy and France, won the Silver Star for bravery. Came back and was very angry because his family was in, I believe, Minidoka, while he was risking his life in France. So he harbored this anger until the day he died, passed away.

VY: And was that anger directed at the JACL because he felt like he kind of did what he was told to do?

DS: Well, I think there was anger directed to the JACL, but I think superseding his anger or overcoming his anger, he headed up, he was the co-head of the redress subcommittee within the New England chapter of the JACL. So he channeled, I think, part of his anger toward the organization by focusing on the organization's soon to become primary focus, and that is on the redress issue.

VY: So did this individual, he went ahead and became part of the JACL, the New England chapter?

DS: Oh yes, very much so. He was an outspoken critic, but also a staunch supporter of the redress issue. And he was a critical member of the team that drove the redress, support for redress here in New England.

VY: And was this the first time that you began to learn about redress, or had you been talking about it before?

DS: I think it was only during the early years of the New England JACL that, in February of '79, '80 timeframe where redress became more of a national issue, and the chapter, the New England chapter, picked up the issue of redress. And there began discussions about whether, what to do for their redress effort. And as the concept of the Commission on Redress began to take shape, there began a growing enthusiasm about holding the redress, the commission hearings in Boston.

<Begin Segment 8>

VY: So do you think that the desire to explore and promote redress was intertwined with the reigniting of the New England chapter of the JACL?

DS: To an extent, but in the very early days, there was a lot of outreach to other communities. There was a lot of public presentations on the internment, and once again, it's part of that educational teach-in concept. And so once the chapter was assembled, and it gave us a platform to speak from, that we were able to gain appearances on television, on speaking engagements to different groups. So since the inception in 1979 to 1980, there had been multiple engagements with the press, with television appearances, with public speaking, and with meetings and performances. I think about the movie Hito Hata, it was an early movie describing the internment, and it was sponsored in part by the JACL and the Asian American resource workshop, another example of reaching across the community to other community groups. And I have to mention one of the members of the workshop, Peter Kiang would often sit in on our executive committee meetings, and he would be a very painful and loyal supporter of the New England chapter of the JACL.

VY: So it sounds like a very involved process it must have been to basically transition the JANE group into the JACL. Did all the members of JANE become part of the JACL or did some people...

DS: I think they did. I think the vast majority became members of the JACL, and I think there was a growing enthusiasm for telling the internment story and to reach out to other community groups. There were others that formed the executive committee of the JACL. The chapter itself often had no more than thirty, forty members. It was one of the, if not the smallest chapter in the JACL. With only thirty or forty members, there were maybe a handful of individuals that really push the agenda. And some really key individuals, including... well, I mention, now, his name, Eji Suyama, and Kei Kaneda who were co-chairs of the redress committee. And they were real firebrands, they really reached out, they really drove the redress issue. Gary Glenn and his wife, Gary was sort of the recording secretary and publicist. And I think by default, I ran for and was elected president of the JACL. And I sort of feel that as a default opportunity, because these people were really committed, they spent all their time promoting the JACL drumming up new members and doing all the necessary paperwork and doing the publicity. So I sort of felt like I was the front person, and any time someone needed to speak on behalf of the JACL, they would wheel me out and let me be the face of the New England chapter of the JACL. But it was a core group that really drove the agenda.

VY: So it sounds like you're saying it really was a group effort, but you, as the president of the JACL, were the spokesperson.

DS: Yeah. But I spoke, I had interviews on television, Say, Brother, the PBS Black news program. I spoke on Asian Focus about the internment. There was the first Asian Pacific Islander Heritage Month in 1979, I spoke at that. I then began speaking to different college groups at Dartmouth, at University of Vermont, to a group a high school teachers in New Hampshire. So it was a pretty active speaking schedule.

VY: And what was that like being in that position, going back to what you had talked about earlier, as someone who maybe wasn't that comfortable with public speaking, and now this was a few decades, couple decades later, you are the person, you are the guy who was going out there and talking about all these things?

DS: Well, first of all, you have to recognize that this is a very small group. Everybody had to do everything. And I'm just astounded that this small group, with its connections, with its outreach, could call upon, could take the idea of bringing the commission hearings to Boston, to the Harvard campus. That this small group of key individuals could pull this off. So this is unlike anything that was seen on the West Coast, where there would be hundreds of testimonies, hundreds of different venues, quite a few venues on the West Coast. We had no survivors testifying at the redress commission hearings. But it was a very exciting time because now we had a focus. It reached across the community, and we began to tell the story. I think, at that time, I had finished my training at the school, Harvard School of Public Health, in Health Policy and Management, and taken a number of business courses taught by graduates of the business school, and gained a lot of confidence to take an idea, to show leadership. By that time, I was a consultant for an international consulting firm, where I had consulting assignments throughout the world. So it seems like I had broken through, both on a personal note, but on a professional level.

VY: Yes. And also, in addition to your full-time job, you were doing all these things. You and everybody else was doing all these things to propel forward the New England JACL, and it sounds like it really was an all hands on deck kind of endeavor.

DS: It was, yeah. But it was a very exciting time. And looking at some of the documentation, there were some really key people, including, of course, Kei Kaneda, whose sister was involved with the Philadelphia JACL chapter. And Eji Suyama, and Peter Kiang. By that time, Glen Fukushima had graduated from Harvard, and the other students also began graduating and disappearing. And so all that we were left with, the core group. But there were some really important context that helped propel the concept of having the commission hearings. And by early 1981, in the fall, the National Chapter began to take notice that there is the possibility of a commission and coming to Boston in addition to its West Coast tour.

<Begin Segment 9>

VY: Well, then now is probably a good time -- sorry.

DS: Go ahead.

VY: I didn't mean to interrupt. I was just going to say, now is probably a good time to talk about that difference between the hearings on the West Coast and the hearings in Boston.

DS: Right. Well, I can't speak for the staff of the commission, but I think there were a number of civic leaders, largely Japanese American, and many of them may have had experience with the internment as well as survivors of the internment as well as local Japanese American civic leaders testifying before the commission. We had none of those. I don't think we had one survivor that was on the list to, that was presented to the commission as potential witnesses before the commission. But all the names that were on that list were, like Lawrence Tribe, constitutional expert, a number of Harvard professors, academic leaders, physicians, all Caucasians. There was not one Asian witness that spoke before the commission. And the commission hearing was held on the Harvard campus, and on December 9, 1981, which was almost forty years to the date of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

VY: Can you talk a little bit more about what the strategy was there, like the purpose of having more...

DS: Well, it was quite obvious that we couldn't field a large group of survivors to testify to their personal experiences, which, you know, on the West Coast, those hearings were heart-wrenching. It was the first time many spoke of their experience in the camps. We realized that we didn't have that community to draw from, but we decided that we could draw from experts in the field of constitutional law. Where else would you go if you wanted an opinion on constitutional law at Harvard Law School. We felt that there would be other individuals from the academic world that could make contributions as to how do you value the loss of life. How do you compensate, how do you redress the survivors, and what the size of the monetary fund and the size of the redress payment should be. And so it was more of an academic exercise, giving the commission a much different perspective than what they were hearing on the West Coast. So the New England chapter of the JACL was not asked to testify, but they had a full house of experts to talk about psychological, financial, emotional, constitutional issues. And we felt that that was our strong point.

VY: And was that... who made these decisions to have that approach on the East Coast? Was that a National decision, National JACL decision?

DS: Well, I think we raised the idea of bringing the commission to Boston. That we as the New England Chapter broached the National Chapter as a possibility. That we felt left out because there was so much emphasis on the West Coast. But we also felt that we had resources here. We had valuable testimony that the commission might appreciate. So we worked off of our strengths, and even though we were a small group, I think the national organization recognized the value that we could bring to the redress effort.

VY: As you were preparing for all of this and participating in it, were there specific JACL leaders that you had to interact with, that you were able to interact with?

DS: Well, I think John Tateishi who was sort of the co-chair or chair of the redress committee, met with us. He was the first to come to Boston to introduce the concept of a JACL chapter, and it was, I think, at the invitation of, as I mentioned, Glen Fukushima and Alex Kimura. But I think we continued to work on our contribution, keeping the national office informed. But the communication finally was really between Harvard, Harvard University and the commission, and the staff at the commission.

VY: Oh, that's interesting. That's interesting that it was the university itself.

DS: Right. And one of our JACL members was a longtime staff member at Harvard, his name is Kiyo Morimoto. And Kiyo headed up the study department for, it was designed to give special help to students that are struggling. So the study center was headed up by Kiyo, and we have in our records the letter that he wrote to President Derek Bok suggesting that Harvard invite the presidential commission to hold hearings on the Harvard campus. So it was Kiyo's personal relationship with the president that I think put the issue on the table, and there was finally, in late October of '81, a letter sent by Allen Counter who was head of, I think, sort of a diversity center at Harvard inviting, officially inviting the commission to hold hearings at the Harvard campus. And that letter really sealed the agreement that Harvard, the great Harvard University, extended an invitation to the presidential commission to come and hold hearings on the prestigious Harvard campus.

VY: Do you think it would have moved forward if it weren't for those things?

DS: Yeah, I think so. Well, Harvard is very, continues to be a very monolithic, a monolithic organization. And unless you have good inroads, good contacts, and access, it's very difficult to move this ship upstate in one direction or another. So the fact that Kiyo had a good relationship with President Bok made it so much easier. I think it was the key to putting the commission hearings on the agenda for Harvard University.

VY: Wow, that's such a good example of the importance of having those connections.

DS: Right.

VY: And kind of, if not a seat at the table, at least an ability to approach the table.

DS: But I think Kiyo was also a 442nd survivor. And I don't ever recall him ever taking credit for opening, help to open the door, it was just something that he did. In retrospect, I think Kiyo was the main instigator in promoting the commission hearings on the Harvard campus.

<Begin Segment 10>

VY: Were you able to attend those hearings?

DS: No, I have no recall of attending the commission hearings. I don't know what I was doing, but I have no recall of attending any of the hearings.

VY: Well, you did have a full-time job at the time.

DS: I must have been working. But I do remember, I do remember vividly the luncheon that was held after the hearings. And I remember giving so many remarks on behalf of the New England chapter of the JACL, "We appreciate blah-blah-blah." And when I was finished with my comments, during that luncheon, the professor who testified before the commission, his name is David Musto, who was a professor of psychology and actually drug addiction, testified before the commission. And in his remarks at the luncheon, he said when he was growing up in Seattle, Washington, his father brought him down to "Camp Harmony" to see what was happening to the Japanese American community. And they stood outside the barbed wire and looked in on the incarcerees. So I got up and thanked him for his comments, and I said it's really ironic that almost forty years later, "your father was standing on the outside, and I was standing on the inside, and here we are, forty years later, celebrating the establishment of the commission, and we hope that the findings will bring some closure to this." So I thought it was great to be on the inside looking out. And David, Professor Musto as a child, looking in, and we were meeting forty years later.

VY: That's such a powerful image. Okay... oh, I was wondering how many days the hearings lasted, do you remember?

DS: I have no recall. It's a blank.

VY: That's okay.

DS: I think you can go into the records and find the transcripts and all that. I think that the encounter with Dr. Musto was really memorable for me on a personal note.

VY: Yeah, it's so powerful. Do you remember how the hearings recovered at the time, do you have any recollection of if the news was reporting on it?

DS: I do. I have a collection of news clippings and the like. I'm not sure if there was much coverage in the greater Boston area. But I think the commission hearings in Boston had an impact on the recommendations made by the commission.

VY: And do you think that impact was recognized by the other chapters as well?

DS: I don't know. We're sort of like a little appendage on the greater JACL organization. And we were pretty well focused on the redress, on the commission hearings. We sort of had one objective at the time, and I know that the objectives have broadened since that time over the years. But we were, it almost felt like we were a team of guerrilla fighters with one objective, and that was to bring the commission hearings to Boston.

VY: It's a good way. Now, I do know that there were some different philosophies towards redress, and I was wondering if you ever interacted with any, there's a couple of different organizations that kind of peeled off?

DS: No, not really. If you had asked me what happened after redress, I think the chapter became somewhat dormant. I had to pursue my career with much vigor, and after all that energy that was expended to bring the commission hearings to Boston, I think we had to move on. Glen Fukushima graduated in '82 and has had a distinguished career. I've lost track of Alex Kimura, some of the other members of JANE and the JACL. There was a family, the "Dutch" Adachi family, Dutch and Aiko were Niseis, but they were very, very supportive of JANE and the JACL. And Aiko wrote me a wonderful letter talking about the Nisei attitude towards, especially the New England Nisei attitude towards the JACL and the excitement she had about the younger Sansei and their enthusiasm� for pushing the idea of joining the JACL and redress. And I had the privilege of having lunch with her. She's a hundred years old, sharp as a tack, but she didn't recognize... she didn't recognize me. But she wrote a wonderful letter that's in the records now, historical records of the chapter that describes the conflict between the Nisei, some of the Nisei, and the up and coming Sansei activists who were promoting the JACL.

VY: Oh, that's great. It's firsthand documentation, that's wonderful.

DS: Yeah, yeah. It's a wonderful letter, I love reading it. Both her son Michael Adachi, along with Alex Kimura, Glen Fukushima, were really pushing the concept.

<Begin Segment 11>

VY: Okay. So how long were you actually the president of the New England chapter of the JACL?

DS: Well, I have to admit that I sort of disappeared behind the screen because I think we had accomplished our objective, and I think we had to, I think Gary Glenn and Evelyn (Nakano) Glenn, his wife, had to move on. Evelyn has gone on to distinguish herself as a professor of women's studies at Cal Berkeley. Gary Glenn has since, unfortunately, passed away. But at that point, we had careers to pursue, but I continued to speak on the internment and on redress. And as things evolved on the pilgrimages and Minidoka and the like.

VY: Yeah, so maybe it's a good time to start talking about that. You and this group of individuals, basically, you reinvigorated the New England JACL and you did the hard work of working on redress, and you kind of laid the foundation for the next group of people to kind of come along and keep everything moving. And you all went on to do other work, and one of the things that you went on to do, in addition to your career, was to... you were involved in a couple of things. You were involved in camp preservation work, and also in giving talks. I know you've done quite a lot of that.

DS: Yes, yeah.

VY: What would you like to talk about first?

DS: Over the years, it began pre-redress, as part of this consciousness-raising effort to talk about the internment of Japanese Americans. But then continued to talk about the internment story, its implications, but also the role of the pilgrimages and hopefully some closure on the internment issue, or what's the future of the internment issue, especially during, let's say, the attack on September, 9/11, on September 11th, and the growing hostility towards the Muslims' population. And then the pilgrimages that began, and subsequently some of the threats to the Minidoka National Historic Site. So in a way, the fight continues, and the story needs to be told. And my most recent presentation was to a library group in southern New Hampshire just last month.

VY: And how did that go? You've been doing this for quite some time, and I wonder if the audiences to your presentations have changed, or if the questions they ask have changed, or are they kind of the same? Do people seem to have a different perspective or more knowledge about what happened to Japanese Americans during World War II? Have you noticed any?

DS: Yes. I think about the early times that I spoke to different groups. I once went to the University of Vermont to an Asian American student group, and I don't think the internment story was widely disseminated at that time. That was 1980, '81. So that's thirty years ago, over thirty, almost forty years ago. But the story is more widely known by individuals, by schools. And also I've been asked by students to be interviewed as part of their project. And this continues over the past years that I'll give a personal interview to a student who is writing a paper on the internment. And even last month, the New Hampshire Humanities Foundation gave a large grant to set up a reading program during Asian Pacific American Heritage Month and that eleven libraries subscribe to this grant, receive this grant, and they featured a reading group all reading the Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet. So from a story that's little-known to here in little old New Hampshire, the Plaistow (N.H.) Public Library sponsored a reading group to discuss one single group and then brought Jamie Ford, the author of the book, to speak to sell-out crowds here in New Hampshire. So even here in the wastelands, the internment story is being heard.

VY: Well, also, it's so encouraging to hear about this grant that is allowing all these libraries to have this kind of a program at a time, right now, when books are being banned in schools.

DS: Well, yes, yes. So... and what's encouraging, that there are stalwarts that I've met in the library system that really defend their right to reading a wide range of books. So the fight evolves. But getting back to Minidoka, I think the threats are still there.

<Begin Segment 12>

VY: So, David, before the break, we were talking about... well, actually, let's back up a little bit and let's go back to finishing up talking about redress on the East Coast. And you had some things to share about what people did with their redress funds. And thought you might want to describe what that was all about, and how people received the letter and the compensation.

DS: Right. Well, I think the historical record will show that Congress passed legislation that would provide redress payments to the survivors of the internment camps, and I think there were about sixty thousand out of the hundred and twenty-thousand survivors that received a payment. The amount of redress was about one-point five billion dollars which, by today's standards, is a rounding error. But at the time, it was quite controversial to make a redress payment to individuals who perceived they were wronged by the U.S. government. And it brings up the whole question today about redress and how redress could be done to those who suffered from slavery. But that's a whole different story. I think the redress payments were distributed, and I received mine as well as a letter of apology signed by George Herbert Walker Bush. That letter was signed in 1990, almost ten years after the whole concept of redress began. And it was a long, I was a little taken aback today when I realized it took almost ten years, a decade of effort, by thousands of people to result in this letter as well as the monetary payment. When I speak to high school groups, I talk about redress and how important redress is. But the redress contains several parts, including funding for some of the work, I believe, that Densho is involved with, with the grant monies. But also individual payments as a recognition that the government performed a wrong and needed to create, to apologize. I sometimes ask high school students, what would they take if they had a choice? Either the payment, the twenty-thousand dollar payment, or the letter of apology. And it varies. I think at the beginning, most of the students would opt to take the money. But that seems to be changing, where more and more of the students would appreciate the value of the letter. And I have to, I would remind the students that a twenty-thousand dollar payment wouldn't buy you a new car these days. And so was that an underpayment for all the pain and suffering that the internees suffered? And so it creates a good basis for discussion among the listeners, the high school students. So I'm told that many people, recipients signed their check and spent it, or put it in a savings account. There was a group of Nisei here in New England, again, who decided that they would pay it back and pass it forward to new generations of students. Because when they were students, college age students, they were part of a program that enabled them to leave the camps and to continue their higher education at various colleges throughout the East Coast. And many of, some of these students ended up in fairly responsible, very responsible positions in New England. And so they banded together and created a fund where they pooled their twenty-thousand dollar redress payment into a scholarship fund, which is the Nisei Student Scholarship. New England Student Nisei Scholarship Fund.

VY: Is that the same as the Nisei Student Relocation Commemorative Fund?

DS: Yes, it is. So I don't know the official name, but to my embarrassment, I do sit on the investment committee for the fund, and I've been on the committee for over, about ten years of more. And so the investment committee is chaired by a Sansei who is absolutely brilliant, and he reports to the board of the scholarship fund. And we look at the investment strategy and the performance of the fund going forward. So it's an exciting program, because we begin to see next generation Asian Americans, first generation, second generation Asian Americans. And I was very lucky to attend one of the award ceremonies here in Massachusetts, and I sat next to a first new arrival family from Vietnam, and their daughter was the first to go to college, and she was a recipient of a scholarship from the fund, and, of course, she's going to Harvard.

VY: That's amazing. That's such meaningful work. I mean, to make those resources available to people that way, that's amazing.

DS: But it's a legacy of the Nisei, those that were supportive of JANE and the JACL and the Nisei Retirement Fund people, all banded together and created this fund that is still distributing scholarship monies as we speak.

VY: It sounds like it's doing quite well. Do you remember what brought you to become part of the investment committee?

DS: Well, there was another sort of, what can I say? A group called the Nisei Retirement Group, that was formed at about the time of JANE. And there was a study from maybe even the University of Washington circulating among the Japanese American community about issues relating to retirement. So there was a disparate group of Niseis who are not quite ready for retirement, but found the questionnaire interesting, so they formed an ad hoc group, the Nisei Retirement Group, and they began discussing retirement. But like many Japanese, the discussion quickly turned to Japanese cuisine and food. And the whole concept of the Nisei Retirement Group here in New England devolved or evolved into the annual Oshogatsu celebration in January of each year. And so Oshogatsu is a celebration here in New England that's been going on for well over forty years, and what's remarkable is that many if not the original founders of the Nisei group have passed on, but their progeny, their offspring, and then their grandchildren and their great-grandchildren are still having the Oshogatsu. So it's another example of how difficult it is here in New England to assemble a critical mass on any issue. But having home cooked Japanese food is a compelling reason to get together at least once a year. So it was the nucleus of the Nisei Retirement Group that funded the scholarship program.

VY: That's so interesting. And for some reason, when you were talking about the Oshogatsu, it reminded me of, way back in our previous conversation when you were talking about, there was like a small... I think it was like a community fair kind of thing, and your mom brought Japanese food to the fair?

DS: Yeah. It was in Milwaukee, they would have some kind of cross-cultural festival, and my mother would always bring sushi or whatever, Japanese foods. I think it was very popular at the Folk Fair Festival in Milwaukee.

VY: That's interesting. Everybody enjoys good food.

DS: Correct. Well, if you look at the popularity of sushi...

VY: That's true, that's true.

<Begin Segment 13>

VY: Okay, so let's see. Should we talk about, how about we talk about pilgrimages and camp preservation now?

DS: Right, pilgrimage. First of all, President Clinton signed an executive order to establish Minidoka as a National Historic Monument or site. And that was during the latter last days of his administration. And I can't remember the date, but our son Dan, who worked in the White House, was involved in making it happen and putting it on the agenda. And that's a whole different story, but Dan has been involved in the Minidoka National Historic Site for, since its inception. But Dan invited me to come down to the White House, to the East Room where President Clinton signed the executive order that established Minidoka as a National Historic Site. It's the first and the last time I've ever been in the White House, but it was at a really exciting time because there were some of the principals in the Bill Clinton, President Clinton's administration, including, of course, Congressman Mineta and others. But an unsung hero is John Podesta, who was then Chief of Staff. And I'd like to tell a short story about John Podesta.

VY: Please.

DS: Although Dan may object. But as is in all political environments, it's difficult to get the issue to the top or for the President to consider it as an important issue. But Dan approached John Podesta, who was then Chief of Staff. And Dan told Mr. Podesta about the situation, about Minidoka, about Dan's parents being interned at Minidoka. And John Podesta said, "I know all about it. I know all about the internment." Because he grew up on the north side of Chicago, and many of the Japanese Americans who migrated out of the camps settled in the north side of Chicago. So he was quite familiar with the aftermath of the internment and its aftermath. And without any hesitation, John Podesta said, "Well, let's go with it." And it was essentially done, signed during the last days of the Clinton administration.

VY: Again, another example of the importance of exposing people to this information, right?

DS: Right. And that gets me sort of... this is my soliloquy about why I give the talk. You never know when and where the internment story will find a home and resonate with somebody. Years later, now, John grew up in the 1940s when there was a large influx of Japanese Americans, but years later, in 1980/'81, 1990, he remembered that and made a critical decision. So my feeling about telling the internment story is that it's like a put this experience of the Japanese American community in a bottle and I throw it out into the ocean. And somewhere, somehow, somebody will pick up the bottle, open it up, and read the story. So I think about high school students, nobody knows what their future will bring. But maybe someday a high school group will use the example of the internment and make a critically important decision.

VY: I just love that image of throwing the bottle out into the water and someone opening it and finding the note inside it.

DS: Yeah. Forty years later, fifty or a hundred years later. So that's my raison d'etre, my reason for giving these talks, because you never know where the seed will find fertile ground.

VY: It's so true. It's so true.

<Begin Segment 14>

VY: And you know, in addition to the importance of that, I wonder if you can speak a little bit to the healing power of the camps and the importance of the preservation work.

DS: Yeah, yeah. But just going back to the pilgrimage, Dan invited us, my wife and daughter, to go to the first pilgrimage, and that's the only one I've gone to. But that was shortly after... well, that was the first pilgrimage, and I recall Dan speaking during the luncheon, and he mentioned something that really stuck with me. He said he was very fortunate to be at the right time and the right place to have an effect, to have an influence on the outcome. And that it's very important to be in the right time at the right place and to do the right thing. So it was gratifying to go back to Minidoka with my family, with my daughter, to look at the barracks, to listen to my son speak about his experience. And it was really an act of healing. It was a, not only an act of healing, but it was a real sense of camaraderie, a commonality of experience. And one thing I remember vividly is it was a session of just sitting around telling stories, camp stories. And it was wonderful because there was a sense of shared experience. I don't think there was a sense of bitterness or sadness, but just a sense of shared experience and it really led to this feeling of healing that whenever, whatever psychic injury or concerns is now healed, it's gone. And we talked about the long-term effects of the internment, but the pilgrimage really offers a place of healing, a place of solitude. Because it is, my gosh, a desolate place. And we spent a portion of our life, however brief, in that place. And the toll that it took is incalculable. It's hard to measure the full extent of the internment experience, but the monument is available for people to experience it, but also a place for healing.

VY: You know, that's a really powerful description of the importance of preserving the sites and the pilgrimages. And it really emphasizes, to me, it emphasizes how it's really for, if people ask, well, who is it for, is it for the people who experienced this or their families, or is it for the general public? And you know, I think it's for everybody, but really specifically, it has such a powerful, I think, importance for the families who have this in this ancestry of having people in their family who have gone to one of these camps. And there are different kinds of relationships that they have with the camp itself. And I like how you described how it is really more of a healing experience, not so much an experience of feeling bad. Even though this horrible thing happened there, but it's more about remembering the space and the people that you were with all this time, that one really strong shared experience that shaped so many people and so many generations of people.

DS: Right. And that experience had, I'm beginning to appreciate the long-lasting effects of the internment. And it's not to denigrate other people's life experiences, but this is our experience, this is our group experience. It's a hundred and ten Japanese Americans, Aleutian Americans, Canadian, Peruvian Americans. This is our communal experience, and it's a story that needs to be told. So coming back to the last decade or two, I have a friend who is a playwright, and her name is Rosanna (Yamagiwa) Alfano. she lives right off the Harvard campus, or her husband, I'm sorry, was a professor at Harvard. She wrote a play, it's entitled Don't Fence Me In. And as part of our effort to tell the internment story, that play was read at several locations including the Cambridge Center, and where a number of plays relating to minority groups were read. And I was asked to read the part in Rosanna (Yamagiwa) Alfano's play, Don't Fence Me In. And in addition to speaking on television or before public groups, students and the like, I read Rosanna's play, which was about a husband, an elderly husband who was very crabby, and a son who wanted to enlist in the army, and the turmoil that it caused while living in the camps. But I think about the phrase, the song "Don't Fence Me In." And coming back to the issues today where the Minidoka community as well as others are fighting to prevent the development of an extremely large wind farm that's almost adjacent to the boundaries of the camp. And I'm just outraged that the nearest wind tower, which could be as high as seven hundred feet high, would be within a mile of my home in Barracks 15, Building 8, Room E. What an outrage it is to have such a monstrosity right adjacent to my home. And my spirit, my family's spirit, my experience still resides on that spot. And it's an outrage to have that monstrosity marching up, essentially, to my front door.

VY: You know, when I hear you talk about it that way, what strikes me, it's as if these spaces are really sacred ground.

DS: Yes, there's sacred ground, but there's part of me, part of my family, part of my mother and father that are still there. And it's unacceptable to have what we consider as sacred ground, to be spoiled by a corporation that is designed to make money off the backs of those who have to bear the burden. And as a former investment banker, I'm keenly aware of the power of capitalism, of making money, and how that may have unintended consequences. But I also understand that the prime evil force that drives these hedge funds, these privately held hedge funds, to maximize their return off the backs of whoever stands in their way. And I hope that we are able to survive this assault this assault by this monstrosity.

VY: That's really powerful.

<Begin Segment 15>

VY: David, I just have a couple more questions I wanted to ask, and before I do, I wanted to see if there's anything you think we should cover before we conclude today that we haven't touched upon?

DS: I'm better off if you ask me questions, but I do want to say, in retrospect, that it's been a real privilege to have this time to share my thoughts with you and with Densho. And I thank Densho and Tom and others effusively, because I've never done this before, but I'm so happy to have it in some type of repository where people can hear the story and hopefully benefit from it. I'm so grateful, so excited for this opportunity to talk with you. But also, I think about all the people that I worked with who really did all the heavy lifting. I'm basically the emperor without clothes. And all the people behind the curtain, I think they should have all the credit because they were amazing.

VY: I think the way you're speaking about it all shows what a great leader you are, because you do recognize how it does take so many people to work on something and to reach the outcomes that you're looking for, it's never just one person. But at the same time, you do seem to often be in that position where you are more in a slightly more leadership position. And I wouldn't be surprised if that comes again from your childhood of being the oldest child, being told you need to take care of the family, things like that. It's like that's just sort of a part of who you are, and you've developed that part of yourself throughout your entire life. You've even kind of put yourself in situations that weren't that comfortable on purpose.

DS: Yeah. Well, whatever. Certainly those are very kind words, but I've been very fortunate to have lots of friends who have supported me, who worked very, very hard. I think about Gary Glenn, who has now passed away, they brought skills that I've never had. Kei Kaneda, who was the driving force, she was the driving force behind all this. Glen Fukushima who is such a, he's the smartest guy I have ever known. So it's been a wonderful journey, and I've enjoyed it. And oddly enough, I had a lot of fun.

VY: Well, I've had such a good time talking with you, I don't really want to conclude. I just want to keep talking with you, but I know that it's been a long day. So I just have a couple more questions. One is, I was curious about when you first talked about your wartime experience with your kids. Is that something you did while they were growing up, or did it happen later in life?

DS: I really can't recall the first time I talked to Dan, Peter, and our daughter Meeya about the internment. But I think during Oshogatsu it was safe to talk about the internment. And there have been times, there are times when I would be asked to talk about my own personal experience as part of the Oshogatsu celebration. And the purpose was to pass the story down to the next generation, subsequent generations. I don't think Dan or Peter was ever in the audience, but for some reason the internment story was always lurking in the background. And I think Dan would be really uncomfortable if I told this little snippet of the story, of the Minidoka story, but here goes. And Dan, you're just going to have to bear with me. So I don't think any of the boys were really interested, but they had an inkling that that was part of my past and my family's past. So during the last several months of the, President Clinton's administration, I got a call out of the blue from Dan. And he said, "Dad, tell me about the internment." And it was amazing. We had never talked about the internment, he was in an important position in Washington, and out of the clear blue sky he asked me. So I briefly told me about the internment and redress, and he said, in his typical fashion, he said, "Okay, thanks, bye," and that was it. So he went on to... and you saw what happened with the signing of the executive order. So I don't think internment was ever integral to our discussion, but somehow Dan remembered the internment experience by our family.

VY: You know, that's interesting because my final question to you, actually, is related to your son Dan. Something that caught my attention earlier this year was, you know, this year is the eightieth anniversary of Executive Order 9066. And so I was attending several Day of Remembrance events in February, and one of the events happened to include your son Dan as a panelist. And one of the things that he said that really struck me, he said that his parents instilled in him "a low tolerance for injustice," that's a quote. And I'm just wondering how hearing that makes you feel, and I wonder if this is something you consciously instilled in your children, or do you think that they just observed how you lived your life?

DS: I don't know. I have no clue where that came from. Very kind remarks. But I have to say that I haven't mentioned my wife, Maryellen, who you met briefly. We've been married over forty-four years now, but she's been a great influence on my being comfortable looking at my roots, looking at the internment experience. She' been extremely supportive. In fact, one of the, several of the photographs that I use from the National Archives, actually from the University of California Bancroft collection, she and I were sort of browsing through the photographs, and she recognized the photograph of myself, my two brothers, peering out of the train window. She's an artist, and I would have not recognized me, but she said, "David, that's you." So that was an epiphany that here in the national records are photographs of our family, which I then use, with attribution, in my talks. But she comes from a Boston Irish Catholic family where politics, discussion, current events, is really important in the daily flow of life. So maybe that's where Dan got his feeling of being instilled with justice.

VY: As usual, you're being very kind and generous with your words.

DS: Well, Dan has a very strong sense of justice. And if there is injustice standing in his way, just watch out.

VY: Well, it sounds like he thinks he got that from you. And I will leave it on that. [Laughs] David, it's been such a pleasure talking with you. I'm just so appreciative of the time you spent with us. Thank you so much.

DS: Yeah. Well, I hope someday we'll be able to meet in person.

VY: Me, too.