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BY: So talk a little bit about Farewell to Manzanar.

SS: Oh, yeah, Farewell to Manzanar. So Carolyn Abe, who we jokingly refer to as my cousin-in-law, I met her my freshman year because she kind of bounced into my freshman dorm and came up to me and said, "Hi, I'm Carolyn, I'm your cousin." So it turns out Aunt Hiroko's sister is Carolyn's aunt. So it's all by marriage, but... so this is kind of those seven degrees of connection. Anyway, so we became friends and she stayed in touch. So I think it was the summer after my junior year I decided to stick around campus and work. And that's the year that they were filming Farewell to Manzanar and they needed extras for the crowd scenes. So Carolyn was interested in film, so she had gotten a job as an assistant to the assistant to the person who, the casting director. So she put out the call to all the Asians she knew at Stanford, "They need people to be extras in this movie, can you come out?" So I was free, so I said, "Sure, I'll do it." So then I went, and I was in two scenes. One was the big riot scene where the army is shooting into the crowd and kills two people, actually happened at Manzanar. But I was way in the back and there was smoke all over the place and stuff so you can't really see me. But the other crowd scene was where the main character Mako is exhorting everybody to come out to the rally that night, and so there's people lined up along the fence and the barracks, and then people on the truck as he's driving by going, "Yeah, yeah." And so I'm standing right next to him, so you can see me. So I'm on for about five seconds.

BY: Okay.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.