<Begin Segment 14>

DG: Let's see. Maybe we'll move ahead now to, to present-day and we're building this memorial. And can you tell me your feelings on the memorial and...

TK: Well, I think it's a good thing. I think if people didn't know that we were... went through all this, they should know. And it could happen to anybody. And, but I think what really hits me is that I went through school and I wasn't a very good student. And you're talkin' about the Constitution and what it meant to each one from the first to the thirteenth, and yet, our government doesn't practice, you know, they don't follow the rules or the Constitution. That bothered me. [Coughs] Because there's rules that we're supposed to follow when they don't follow it all the time, and they don't, they don't apply the laws. They do some, but they, they overlook others. That's the part that kinda bothered me for Americans.

DG: As an eighteen year old, did you think about the Constitution?

TK: I didn't at that time, no. I did later. It took me a little while to get up to my head and realize, "Oh, wait a minute. I went through all of this." I went to school and they were teaching me all of this and who the Indians were, and that's, the Indians were the first Americans. It was their land. But they weren't, they weren't considered citizens, real citizens. And you start realizing, yeah, that it didn't apply to them. And I guess it didn't apply for us, for a little while, because they didn't follow the rules, the Constitution. And I, I'm a renter of apartments, and we sign contracts and in the contract it tells you what you shouldn't do, you can't do and what are my responsibilities, what are their responsibilities, but they don't ever read that. So I have to remind them, "Please read it." But I guess as citizens we tend to ignore some things and take other rules that's in our favor, and ignore the ones that are not our favor. And we just pick and choose what laws you want to abide by. I guess we all do that, I don't know, to a degree. When you're supposed to stop at a stop sign, we slow down and keep on going... we're supposed to stop. But I think the real, I think attorney told me, but the real reason for the stop sign is that we don't get into an accident. So, if you look both ways and if you're rolling and you kept on going, you've actually came to a stop and you're avoiding the accident. That's what it was there for, the law, the stop sign, that is. So, yeah, if you interpret it that way then, yeah, you're not doing the exact thing that the law says. Stop, meaning dead stop and then go. I don't know. I'm not... I'm just a citizen, one man out of millions. It's... even this war. Yeah.

DG: So, what would you like the memorial to be?

TK: Well, to teach people and show them that, yeah, that there is rules that we have to follow and sometimes you don't follow it, this is what happens. You pick on people because he looks different, he's different color, or he's a different religion. And they get boxed into a group that he gonna pick on and rules don't apply to them and only to you.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.