<Begin Segment 32>

LH: Tell me a little bit about what the program was and how it evolved.

MS: Well, we had a curriculum that we developed because most of us were teachers, ex-teachers and we presented it to the school district, at least Mako did. And they said, "Well, it sounds really nice but we don't have any money to fund you, so, but it would be wonderful if we did." Well, so she decided that, well okay, we will get some volunteers, and we will get some critical funding that might be necessary. She was able to that. I don't know how this woman did it but she was wonderful because she talked me into doing this, too. And I said, "Okay, I'll give it a year. I'll try this because there couldn't be any harm in it, and if my kids could be involved in it, too, then why not?" But at the time, I kept thinking, "I wonder if it's really necessary to teach them about the Japanese culture. What would it do for them?"

LH: So this program focused specifically on Japanese?

MS: At first the beginning was Japanese American heritage program. Then it grew to be Asian American, and then we became a full-fledged cultural, ethnic cultural heritage program which crossed all colors, because we found it worked. And what we did was, we had a room and once a week we would meet with different groups of kids. And the group couldn't be larger than ten because it would be, lose its intimacy. So we had groups of eight to ten, and these students had to volunteer for the program. They were never coerced and their parents had to know that it was okay for them to go to this cultural heritage program.

LH: Did your son want to go to this program?

MS: Well, he didn't, he thought of it as a way out of his regular classroom for that amount of time. [Laughs] And then he thought it was a kick. When you're in elementary age, the kids like to have their parents around, so it was kind of a kick for him to see me in the building and leading a session with him, so he came. And then, of course, Pam and all of my kids had a bit of this involvement because I was there. And as I saw them get really excited about Japanese things and Japanese fairy tales and the foods and things like that, I thought, "Gee, I guess it is something that they can be proud of." And I thought, "Gee, that's a shame that I didn't do it myself." So then we started buying Japanese -- well, we had Japanese books in the program -- so then I replicated that and I had some at home. And then I talked to my kids about the growing up. But we never talked about camp. We just never did. It took awhile for me after I got to a point where I thought it's okay and it's something that I have to model for my kids, too. And at that same time, this lady that worked for KOMO-TV was developing a special on the internment. That was one of the first ones that came out. It was called Fences of Minidoka, and I wanted my children to see it, too. So when I knew it was on, I had them all sit down. And they didn't know what they were going to see.

AI: About how old were they?

MS: Well, they were in elementary school, so in that age range. They weren't in secondary -- I mean, in junior high school yet. But I remember them then sitting down, and we're all watching the television and they were quite incredulous that this even happened. And I think the oldest one said to me, "Why didn't you tell us?" And I said, "Well, it was something that was hard to share." Of course, they questioned, "Why, if you were not guilty did you allow this to happen? Why didn't someone stand up and say, 'No, no, you can't do this?'" And I said, "Well, at that time we didn't do protests like you do nowadays." Also, we were a very small segment of a larger population. Many of our older people were non-citizens, too, and here was our American government saying that we had to go to camps. And in essence, they were almost saying that to prove our loyalty, we had to go quietly or else you're disloyal or you'll be put in prisons of another kind. And so I guess the community decided that to preserve the people as a group and their families -- 'cause many were young -- they needed to just go along with it. And I said, "When you see soldiers with guns and everything coming, you just don't go out there and say, 'No way.' You just go along." And Japanese people tend to be very law-abiding and obedient anyway. They've learned that there's a place you must stay when you are in a minority situation, and that's where they found themselves. And we were all like that, and I always said I was a kid so I didn't know one way or the other.

LH: Was all of this helping you to sort out your own ideas about being Japanese American?

MS: I think so. I think so. I think it's hard to admit that somewhere in your mind you think, "I must have been guilty because none of us fought back and everything." So you begin to realize the time and place and the role of Isseis and how they wanted to, I'm sure, but they felt so helpless being aliens, and actually they were aliens. "It's a whole different era now," I told them. "And at that time you couldn't do that. It was just, you'd be squashed. So they went ahead. It didn't mean we were guilty. It just meant that we wanted to take the better road at that time."

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.