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BN: What advice would you give to, you know, a younger version of you coming into the field? Would you advise them to go somewhere else, or what would you say about, who's considering entering the field?

SH: You know when I was at conferences and gave talks, younger women would come up to me. I mean younger Asian women would come up to me. And, you know, we'd exchange emails (about biblio), etc. I don't know if I would tell them to go into some other field. If you're not in the field, you can't change it, but then you might find that the field can't be changed anyway. You know, this is funny. Years ago when I was in grad school, the person that I was closest to in my grad school days was then known as Diana Pelli. But she took her father's name later on, Diana Balmori,. She was married to Caesar Pelli. And one day I said to her, you know, "I've always been interested in aesthetics and I've always wanted to go into interior design." And she said to me, "Oh, no, Su, you don't want to do that because that field is full of homosexuals." And I've thought about that, and I thought, "You know, they wouldn't be as discriminatory as academics." At least I don't think so.

BN: Yeah, my daughter is thinking of going into academia.

SH: Oh, what advice did you give her?

BN: Nothing so far. [Laughs]

SH: Well, if she's going into a field that has to do with Asian Americans, I think she'll do well.

BN: Yeah. She's kind of, sort of. Anyway, we'll talk off camera about that. But I wanted to kind of end with also asking a little bit about--we talked a little about this--but just your involvement with the Amache Historical Society, and kind of why you went into that and what you felt you got out of it?

SH: I've never been really very involved. As I said, it was my idea to start the newsletter, and I have worked on the newsletter. The historical society was very -- it was very ad hoc, you know -- it was volunteerism. And now it's the Amache Alliance. It's become bureaucratized; the relationships are more formal and hierarchical. And as a historian, I know that the beginnings are always more interesting; they always are. It's more freewheeling, it's more inventive, it's less bureaucratized. And I see that happening now, that all the formalization of what used to be, you know, volunteer activities, etc.--that that's beginning to occur. And being out here alone in Connecticut and not in California, let alone in the Denver area, I'm not in touch with people who are very active. And so I've had to rethink this whole issue, and I think that I can't really be active. I am involved in the filmmaking -- there's this film coming up -- because that's my field. And I have written a little bit about docus because I've studied docs, and so I can comment about that as a film person. But as far as the Historical Society, or the Alliance, or, you know, whatever transition is occurring towards the administration of the National Park Service, etc., I can't really be active in that because I'm not there. And also I have a couple of family members who have really life-threatening health conditions so that's very time-consuming.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2022 Densho. All Rights Reserved.