<Begin Segment 18>

DG: Wow, I know we've covered a lot. I'd like to just kind of move to the present now. We're building this memorial to the Japanese Americans who lived on Bainbridge Island during the war. And can you tell me your thoughts now after looking back on... what, how, how do you feel about the memorial being built?

MW: Well, I think it's, it's really, really great that they even thought about doing that. And it's meaningful because we were the first group to be evacuated to go to a camp. And so that, and the rest of the people didn't actually start out 'til a number of months later. And so being that we were a good test case, that's what I would call us, we were a test case, to go to a camp. And although they planned for all the rest of the people to go to camp, and they were building all these camps in the deserts, that the memorial would mean... it means a lot to remember what had happened so that, you know, we won't forget things like that. And by that time we'll be gone. But, so our, our relatives, children, and their children, will know what that's for. And, and all the other communities, too. Because they're connecting it to Minidoka because that's the closest other camp.

But I should say that Manzanar is well ahead in what they've done to create their camp like it was. And if you go there -- I went there not last year, the year before, when they had the pilgrimage -- and they have it so they do have one, one tarpaper barrack there to show what we lived in. And they have all the blocks numbered and then we have one block and somebody asked me, "What is the Children's Village?" And I said, "That's the... we're the only camp that had orphans." And they had orphans like even two, two weeks old over there, that had any type of Japanese ancestry. And I think hers was like an eighth or something like that. But they had, they had brought all the children from the California orphanages into Manzanar, and so that's where they raised those children. And, and then of course the monument for the deceased is still there. And the little baby ones, they have just the rocks that they picked up and they have it like that. And some of the bodies are gone, of course, have been buried in the homes that they live in now, in the areas, I should say. But they have quite a pilgrimage there. And then they have the large, it used to be the gym, and they have remodeled that with a ramp and so anybody with wheelchairs or handicap can get up it. And they have that remodeled so, with the whole history in there. And so they have lots of Bainbridge people in there, because we were the first ones there. And so it's, if anybody wanted to know history, that would be a very good place to go, and, it tells a lot, and it's very, it's very significant because it's all done. A lot of the places are thinking about it, but it's not done yet. But there's, but they started back twenty-five... they finally were able to get an okay and it took them twenty-five years, because they'd have to go through much legislation. And then the fellow who, one of the instigators, which was really hard on everybody else because he died just before the big opening. And so one of the, one of the reunions in Las Vegas that we had let the, his family had a nice video of him. And so it was the young people who did it and tried to do his history. Which was very good, but very sad for most of us.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.