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DG: And at the current time -- speed ahead -- what do you think your parents would think of the memorial that's being built? Or if you can't answer that, what are your opinions on it?

MW: Well, I've been working to get this memorial to happen since what, I don't know, when did we start doing this? 2000, something like that? So I'm all for it. I think it's just... I'm a historian and I've worked in the schools, and I just, it's essential to have something concrete that people can go to and say, "Yes, this happened." I think my folks would be behind it, especially seeing in the last, oh, I don't know, four or five years, the tremendous support from all across Bainbridge Island that has poured into that, either financially or just moral support or people willing to donate their time. It started out a little group of us who thought... I think initially it started out we wanted to have a plaque there. And we did, we created a beautiful, Junkoh Harui did this lovely stone and we have, commemorating the islanders who were sent away. And then someone who had a bigger vision that we did said, "You know, this really is a national issue, and maybe we should talk in broader terms." And so now we are working with the National Park Service and hope to get an association with the National Park Service to really tell the story. But it started just with a small group, and we made a plaque and we wanted to honor our islanders. And then as it got bigger, people would kind of tentatively come up and say, "I've got, this I could offer to do. Would you mind if I helped?" People were very tentative, not wanting to intrude, I don't know. But we said yes, and one of them was the timber framers group who came and very, very politely, and sort of hesitant, "We don't want to intrude, but we'd be willing to make some of the pavilions for you." And there have been lots of folks like that. My parents would look at that and say, "Okay, this is Bainbridge Island doing its Bainbridge Island thing." We've got folks from all across the island who were supporting this and they'd be a hundred percent behind it. They always were strong supporters of Bainbridge Island and community activities. My mother spent years with the Kitsap Regional Library, and actually was part of the group that constructed the first central library that now is serving all of the branches of the library. That was just very important to have a library so people on Bainbridge Island could get the books they wanted, that kind of thing. They would see this as a community project and they'd be behind it a hundred percent.

DG: So can you give some history on how the memorial committee was formed?

MW: Well, it started... if I'm understanding it, it started with the Bainbridge Island North Kitsap Interfaith Council is where it first began. And I wasn't involved at that point, so I'm not really sure, but it did grow out of that group. And I think they approached the island Japanese community and said, "Would you be interested in doing this?" And they said yes, and so we spent two or three years working on the small plaque that we have now at Taylor Avenue. And then, as I say, someone said, "Let's look beyond this." And the National Park Service has been absolutely wonderful in the support that they've given us, how to tell the story, for one thing, and then how to maneuver, to touch all the bases that we need to do to get to the point where there... it looks at this point that there is probable association with the National Guard Service, which would be tremendous, particularly with the interpretive center, to use their expertise and their knowledge, and how we can tell the story in a meaningful way.

DG: And what sort of things... highlight the important parts of what you want the memorial to stand for.

MW: Oh. Well, to me, as a teacher and a historian, I see the interpretive center as really going to be wonderful. But to me, the heart of the memorial is the wall, which is our next step, the memorial wall that borders Taylor Avenue, the road that the islanders walked down with soldiers with fixed bayonets leading them onto a ferry in exile away from their home. We plan to have the names of each of those people on the wall, and I want to walk touching each name. I just want to walk with those people down onto the dock and off the island. That's the heart of it for me. That's what it was, that's what... these people were exiled from their home. I've known this story my whole life, I still cannot get my head around it. I was privileged to be part of the Minidoka pilgrimage this year, and to go and to stand on that land... it was overpowering to be, it was like I was standing on sacred ground. It's hard to describe. But we had an opportunity to see one of the barracks, tarpaper barracks, walls that didn't go up to the ceiling, metal cots that people slept on. I went around in back and I just stood there for the longest time and thought of my friends and my friends' parents and tried to imagine what it must have been like. I still can't quite grasp it. It was very powerful to be there, and I hope that we can create something of that power so people get a visceral connection. These were people just like the rest of us. Just, these were people, and they were forced by their government to go into concentration camp, to be incarcerated, for nothing. They had done nothing. They had to live in a room, twenty by twenty. I was, in Minidoka I was with Fumiko Hayashida who is, what, ninety-six? And she got kind of choked up when we were actually in the barrack, and I don't think anybody else noticed, but I kind of just went and stood by her, put my arm around her a little bit, and she said, "I can't talk about this. I can't talk about it, but I wish I'd never come. I wish I'd never come." And she was looking at these cots. And later that day, I said, "How are you feeling? Are you okay?" She said, "Yeah, still don't want to talk about it, but I'm glad I came." But it was so hard for her to be in that room. They had, she and her husband had two small children, and Leonard, their third, was born in August. So they had three children, and they were allowed five cots. If they had had five cots, there wouldn't have been any room to turn around. So she and her husband, for the remainder of the time that they were incarcerated, each slept with a child in a cot that, it would have been hard for an adult to turn over in. They shared that with a child for two years, for two and a half years.

DG: It always gets me, the amount of sheltering that must have gone on with young children. I know I would do the same with my own kids. So the pressure on the parents to try to make it normal...

MW: I haven't talked with anybody who was a child who has a bad memory. Well, Hisa and her father, but just a day to day bad memory, "It was fun." There were those, who was it that said, "When are we going to go back to America?" Who said that? Somebody asked their parents, "When are going to go back to America?" But no, they had fun. That was a real challenge for parents, but they did it, and they did it across the board. The kids had a good time. They were sheltered. She didn't have a washing machine. Finally, was it Felix Narte who brought the washing machine to Minidoka? That was, what, a year and a half into it? And she had two kids, three kids in diapers? A washboard? One lamp hanging from the middle of the room, no running water? You couldn't eat in your room, you couldn't cook in your room, had to make your own furniture.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2007 Densho. All Rights Reserved.