Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Kunio Otani Interview
Narrator: Kunio Otani
Interviewers: Alice Ito (primary), Rebecca Walls (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: May 31, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-okunio-01-0023

<Begin Segment 23>

AI: Well now, you mentioned that you were, eventually joined the newspaper staff there also. Was that very similar? Was the work quite similar, or in what ways was it different from...?

KO: Well it was different because, in Tule Lake we had a newspaper that we printed the old-fashioned way with the mimeograph. And so we'd type up these stencils, and we'd put the stencil on the mimeograph, and here we'd have the mimeographer pumping these papers out right and left, and then we'd have to staple them together. Where at Heart Mountain, they actually had a newspaper there that they had printed in Cody, Wyoming. So that part was quite different. I thought maybe the Heart Mountain staff was a little older, and a probably a little better organized, I don't know.

AI: You recall any stories in particular that you covered in Heart Mountain?

KO: I really don't. Since I was in the Heart Mountain only a few months -- it seems like only a few months -- before I left, I don't have too many memories of Heart Mountain itself that I can recall clearly at this point.

AI: Right. Well, that was also a time when, I guess there was quite a bit of controversy over some of the Heart Mountain fellows, who had decided to resist the draft until they had their citizenship rights cleared up. Did you know any of those fellows, or hear anything about what had happened to them?

KO: No, I couldn't add any light on that. I was totally un -- not too aware of it.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.