<Begin Segment 12>

SH: You know, I don't know much time we have left, but could we talk about a more painful subject? And that is what I think is the legacy of the camps. Could we talk about that?

BN: Absolutely, I was going to get there.

SH: Well, I knew Gary, who lived at my mother's condo at Tokyo Villa, Gary Ono. And that's how I got involved. I was in touch with Francis [Itoh Palmer] in Seattle. And during a phone call I broached the idea of doing a newsletter because I had done the newsletter for Tokyo Villa for a while and I knew how to turn one out. And I had some publication commitments for the first issue, but since the second issue I've written every word or copyedited or edited every word. And what I found in this last issue -- and I've since resigned -- is that people who go back to Amache have sort of a standard-issue response that's pre-digested. And it goes something along the lines of "Well, you know, it was very worthwhile for me to return to the site of my parents' imprisonment, and we hope that Amache becomes symbolic of injustice so that such violation of civil rights never occurs again." But I've sort of come to think those responses are rather kitsch. In other words they're protective in a way; they're self-protective. I think that it's very difficult to understand and confront the nature of the really virulent racist hatred that our families in camp . . . and why were they in horse stalls? Well, because they weren't considered human, that's why. And you could only mistreat people like that and deprive them of their property and their hopes, etc. -- you couldn't do that unless you thought that these people were not human. And I think that that's a very, very difficult legacy to confront.

And I myself had a lot of problems and I've never been able to get through No-No Boy. There is so much self-destructiveness in that novel. You know, it's so much internalized self-hatred. And I just wanted to throw my hands up in various places and say, "Well, why do you have to identify with any of these people?" But, you know, my husband has always had this term for me, "sui generis." I'm out here in Connecticut. I have no contact with Japanese people at all. The only time I do is when I go back to L.A. But I think that what the camps did -- and we all know this -- is that they destroyed the Japanese American family and community and dispersed them. So that -- I can't remember what work I read -- a Japanese American named Moriuchi -- I think it was he that said that, well, we're a couple of generations behind. I think we're more than that. I think the legacy, the fallout from all that, is more lasting than people are willing to acknowledge and more devastating. And I have to say that I'm very suspicious of writers of color who become adopted by white critics. I want to know what it is they're getting out of it: Orientalism, slumming, tourism, voyeurism, etc. So you have to balance that against the fact that a lot of these people could never get grants, could never get published, could never get their films out unless they adhere to certain, you know, forms, certain acceptable forms. So then given this situation, you know, is anybody permitted to express what this experience did to us Japanese Americans in way that is, you know, unvarnished? And I'm not sure. I'm waiting for those works to still come out. And I have to admit that my own reading has been rather spotty so I need to -- have to go back and read more. But I did read Dillon Myer. Was that his name? Who was the head of the WRA? I read his work. I think it was published in the late '70s, and I was totally appalled when he ended one chapter by saying that he thought that, you know, several Japanese Americans had gotten ahead, and they would not have gotten that far ahead were it not for their experience in the camp. And I thought, "How does anybody think like that?" You know, that's the worst form of white bourgeois noblesse oblige. And I would rather somebody, you know, scream racist epithets at me from across the street. At least you know where that person's coming from.

So I think that the literature -- oh and, by the way, I have to say I went to Yale, and they need to clean up their act. I went into the stacks, and they only had two shelves of books on the subject. Why is that? I think that with any field of study, you have to be sure that the tools are there, that they're in the library. And I find it alarming that the library is increasingly going to digital books instead of hard print, hard copies because you find so much, you know, serendipitous time spent, you know, in searches; they're involved in serendipitous finds . . . some jewels.

BN: Yeah, a lot of the newer books aren't going to be in there in hard copy, they're just digital.

SH: Right, and I think that's a shame. So, well, that's a larger library issue. But the fact that . . . I mean I would assume that at UCLA you'd have a magnificent collection of books on this subject.

BN: Fewer than you would think, I think, for the same reason.

SH: You can't have, can't be limited to two shelves. I mean I went to the stacks and I said, "Well, wait a minute, where's the rest of this?"

BN: A little more than two shelves, but yes, still a lot of -- yeah, a lot of the recent works are just available in digital.

SH: Well, why is that? The library won't allocate?

BN: Well, I don't know, but I mean, I think for students it's more efficient in the sense that . . . like I'm teaching a class and I can assign a book that's digital, and the whole class can access it at once. Whereas if you have one copy of the book on the shelf , you know, that only serves one student. Or back in the day when you had course reserves and you could only check it out for two hours or whatever.

SH: Two hours at a time. Well, you know, this gives me an idea because the UCLA library is in my will, and I've thought about media because I love the media. But I think I should write down Japanese American studies specifically.

BN: Specifying hard copies?

SH: Exactly, exactly. Because, you know, I myself had developed a kind of a cynicism about the term "Asian American." I mean I know it's politically convenient, but I frankly have nothing in common with most South Asians. And you know that book, Minority Feelings? Who was the author of that now? She won an award? Was it Cathy Park? I can't remember. She concludes her book speculating about why Japanese Americans weren't more resistant, you know, about that camp experience. I wrote her a letter; I hope she read it. I said to her, "Maybe you should Google more subjects before going into print." So, you know, I think that this is a problem; the whole Asian American thing is a problem. Unless we think that all this bureaucratization that's resulted from Amache becoming an historic site under NPS -- I'm very ambivalent about that, you know. It leads to a, you know, a lot of government red tape, etc. The film that's being made has to meet their requirements, and, well, already it's becoming a standard-issue talking heads film. But in any case, I wish that there was more opportunity outside the, you know, established channels for expression.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.