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BY: Okay, so just talking about your parents a little bit more, what they were like, what values did your parents instill in you, would you say, as a kid, and then even later?

SM: Well, there were several things. One was, you know, always do your best, and then there was this whole Nisei thing about don't make waves, don't bring undue attention, negative attention to yourself, kind of thing. But I think the best part was just the joy and love as a family. We had a big extended family, and lots of relatives and lots of friends that we called Auntie and Uncle and cousins, we weren't really related to them, but there was just like a lot of close friends. And it was a very positive environment to grow up in, despite the fact that we didn't have much money and we lived allegedly on the wrong side of the tracks, et cetera. We didn't know we were poor. I mean, the fact that we got to pick one dress out of the Sears or Montgomery Ward catalog for school the next school year, we thought that was cool. We didn't realize that only having one new dress was, like, not how wealthier kids lived. We always felt like we were, that we had plenty and that we were loved.

BY: Did your parents ever talk about the incarceration to you, and if so, what do they say?

SM: Almost nothing. As we were growing up, when we would go on family vacations, road trips to California or something like that. We would run into people and they'd say, "Oh, we knew them in camp, we knew them in camp." They'd run into people in various places. When we moved to Seattle, there was a lot of, "Oh, we knew them in camp." And it always seemed like it was positive, but in my mind, I was thinking, "Wow, they must have had a really big Girl Scout/Boy Scout camp," because that was my only frame of reference. And it wasn't until I was in high school that I learned about the incarceration. And then Dad was supportive of me learning more. But Mom wouldn't talk about it at all.

BY: So tell me a little bit about how you found out about it and how your father supported you in learning more.

SM: You know, I don't actually remember how I found out, but I know that for U.S. history class in high school, we had to write a paper that we worked on all year long, final paper, and mine was on the camps. And at that time, there was almost no literature available or anything, so I was doing, like, original research, going to Ike Ikeda's basement and combing through old faded newspaper clippings and things like that, and finding out from various people in the community what it was about. I just don't remember how it first came up, but I do remember very clearly when I gave my oral report, other kids in the class said that I had made it up and that it wasn't true. And my teacher had to tell them --thank goodness he knew the issue -- he had to tell them that it was true and it was a horrible scourge on democracy in this country, blah-blah-blah. But that part I really remember. I don't remember how I first found out.

BY: And who was Ike Ikeda?

SM: Oh, he was an amazing community leader. For decades, he was the director of Atlantic Street Center, a social service agency in the central area. And he was somebody that my parents knew from camp again, and he was like, maybe younger than my parents. But he had somehow amassed these boxes full of news clippings that he had in his basement, and on Saturdays, Dad would take me over there to his house and I would sit on the concrete floor in the basement going through and reading these clippings while Dad and Ike were carrying on upstairs. I believe professionally he was a social worker.

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