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BN: And then you started to mention another project...

JK: Oh. This was a very recent one where Claire Sato, one of our volunteers, said, "You know, it's good to have information about this period," but she was very... she said, "We have to reach their hearts." And the only way she could think of was to have historical storytelling. And so she wanted to go through all that we had collected so far and pick out pertinent excerpts in the voices of the internees. And so Vi Harada, her friend, and fortunately Professor of Library Studies, and she'd written eleven books, said, "I'll help you." And so the two of them worked for several years, they combed our collection and pulled together A Resilient Spirit, that's the publication. And I think that, especially now, when NPS has a long period when they need to plan. And by the time they're ready for the public, all of us will be somewhere, either up or down. [Laughs] And so to pass on to present and future generations, it's got to be, in the words of the internees, in the voices of the internees. So I felt that that was one of the bigger things that came out of, after President Obama signed.

BN: Things kind of early... I remember that we did a presentation, you know, PowerPoint. We asked people, "What was your dream for the Honouliuli site?"

JK: I remember that.

BN: I'm going to ask you the same thing now. Knowing what you know now and so forth, has anything changed? Or what would you like to see at the site at some point in the future?

JK: That artist had a pretty good... I still like what he came up with. I just hope they, especially when you see things like Covid, there are going to be things going on in the future that will challenge our generations. We need something to hang on to that will keep us strong within. And you know, right now it seems to me like American values are more about competition, winning, losing, power. Although with all that's been going on, you see more and more stories about people doing humane things. I think that part, that humane part, because actually, we're just one human race. And I think buried under that somewhere there's a human value that's basic to us all. We're here, but we're supposed to be here to take care of each other and take care of the land that we live in because it's helping us. And I don't think I would have come this far without this experience. Anyway, that's where I am right now. And I don't want to see our kids feeling lost into the future by following a value that maybe won't take you there. And there's so... you often hear people say, "Well, you have to learn history so that you don't make the same mistakes." And I said, "Well, that's pretty good, but we do keep making the same mistakes." So then I heard from, another quote from Aiko Yamashiro from Hawaii Council for Humanities, and she said, "We have to learn history so that we remember, or we learn what our ancestors did well, so that when we need to, we can do it well, too." And I said, "Ah, that's it."

BN: The glass half full perspective rather than the glass half empty.

JK: Yeah. And then, of course, I wrote her and said, "That was wonderful, that really helped me." She wrote back and she said, "I've taken it a step further," and she had taken it to our universal value, and she called it love. And I said, "Yeah." Because we were so busy picking at each other and all the little differences. And I think we're all supposed to be different, but it's not that one is bad and one is good, it is what it is. As long as we take care of each other, I don't know. And that's why I keep hanging around here. [Laughs]

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.