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BN: And I think that's what draws a lot of young people to today is the irreverence and the look, the graphic look of it. In the May '73 issue, you wrote a story about Manzanar when you went to the pilgrimage. And you may not remember the details of the story, but what I wanted to ask you about is what your own understanding or relationship was to the incarceration given that you didn't have a family direct familial connection to that story as did most other Sansei.

MM: Yeah. I think it happened for me gradually. But as I learned, it's kind of like, if you go in steps, like I'm in search of myself, who am I, where do I fit? And being a Japanese American being a big part of that. But who am I as a man or a boy or whatever, who am I as a student, a son, a brother, all those different kinds of things. But in thinking about all those things, I had to look beyond just me and look at the Japanese American community, look at U.S. society. And I'm exposed to all those things because of the political atmosphere that we had in the '60s. And a part of that is like, in going back to Little Tokyo, going back to the Crenshaw area with new, fresh eyes, asking questions and what happened before I was here? And learning about the Issei experience of migration, the wataridori experience, the labor that they contributed. And then the war years, all of those things, I think I was kind of absorbing it as studying someone else's life, but over time it became clear to me that, as a Japanese American who came here post-World War II, can still embrace and really kind of a have a duty to embrace the community's history as my own, too. So as a fresh off the boat shin-Issei postwar immigrant, I cannot say that the history of Japanese America begins when I came here. I see it as something that becomes part of my life when I'd learn about all these things. And many of my friends have families that experienced the concentration camps, the World War II and all that. My girlfriend at the time was, I know the father was out of 442, he had lost a leg. So learning about all these things made it real to me that this is something that I embraced even though none of my immediate family members are in camp. And so I would say for young people or anybody today that I think I advocate for a lot of the shin-Isseis, "Why do you guys keep talking about camps and why is all that important?" I say it is important because it's kind of a... well, in the case of Japanese Americans, it's a unifying experience that happened to everybody that was here at the time. I mean, there are exceptions. And to not understand that as part of your experience as a Japanese American living in this society, it's missing the point. I mean, we should embrace all of that. I would say, too, like I think we need to do better. "We" meaning acculturated, Americanized people, to understand the experiences that new immigrants, and we were talking about immigrants who came in the '50s, '60s, '70s, '80s, '90s on, and even as recent as now, and understanding their experiences. Because I think one regretful -- or I don't know what the term is -- but condition that exists, is there are Japanese Americans and shin-Issei communities that are sort of like parallel existence, largely because of language and culture, but because of misunderstandings or not knowing about each other's histories, and I think that is... not that it's all that important if the two communities never come together, maybe it's okay. But I feel like understanding is a way of sustaining our community, too.

BN: Did you feel that growing up? I guess you're Sansei, technically, but with this different experience, did you feel that from other Sansei as being kind of this different or...

MM: Yeah, I haven't talked about it with other people who had a similar immigration experience as me, but I did feel like I was different from other Sansei growing up. And in fact, in the earlier years, in my first couple years in elementary school, and when I went to middle school, junior high school, I would say I got along better with my Black friends than I did with Japanese American Sansei friends because, I think, I mean, we all know the history now about Niseis being told not to be too "Japanesey," in short. And that being reflected on, like, "Well, we don't want to be with FOBs." I've heard that said to me, "You're an FOB," that sort of thing. And so it took a while, and I think it's me becoming more Sansei culturally, that made it possible. And I don't think everybody has that opportunity, same opportunity to become acculturated or be in the settings of both communities.

BN: Were you able to maintain your Japanese-speaking ability?

MM: You know, I passed myself off as fluent, I mean, I'm really conversational. And what happened with my Japanese was that it stopped when I came here at age nine. And I wasn't sent to Japanese school or being exposed other than my parents. So outside the home, there's no, really, exposure to Japanese. But when I took up ethnic studies, took up coming to Little Tokyo, I was motivated to re-learn Japanese. And so I used to carry around a Japanese dictionary with me all the time so that I can engage in conversation with the people that I wanted to learn from, to take that to ethnic studies. And what I think happened was that, in terms of my language skills, my teenage years, I had no connection to Japan or Japanese. So if I wanted to strike up a conversation with a girl, to do whatever, the social kind of things that teenagers do, I don't have the vocabulary for that, I know only children's language. Then the things that I studied, so I learned about how to say "politics," how to say "revolution," how to say "imperialism," how to say "Black liberation." Anyway, those kinds of vocabulary words, and string together sentences about those kind of things. And when I was more engaged with the seniors in social services, I learned what's called Senmon Yo, or the vernacular of that profession. So I would say it's very difficult to learn Japanese, too, because if you have the ability to read and write kanji, you can create a lot of words and understand a lot of words with compounds. But without that, it's all pure memory. I wish I could have kept that up more. I envy people who are multilingual.

BN: Yeah, me too.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.