Densho Digital Archive
Friends of Manzanar Collection
Title: Mas Okui Interview
Narrator: Mas Okui
Interviewer: Martha Nakagawa
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: April 25, 2012
Densho ID: denshovh-omas-01-0026

<Begin Segment 26>

MN: Now you've been really active with Manzanar. Are you happy with how the Manzanar National Park Service --

MO: Absolutely. With how they did -- but again, we had a say-so about everything. I figured it took three editions to get the movie right. And the one thing I insisted on in the movie, no interviews. I don't want to see anyone's face on that screen. All I want to hear is voiceovers and pictures of what happened to us. Because what kills a documentary, as good as Ken Burns' Civil War is, who wants to listen to Shelby Foote over and over and over again and have to look at him? And then they can show pictures, but that's the way Ken Burns does it. He's got to have someone who's academically postured to speak on behalf of that topic, and I don't like it. Even the Manzanar Fishing Club, they listened to me. They'll have the person talking, and they'll fade into a voice over. And I like that. And they did a really good job, Chris Ohlman who did the exhibits happens to be the son-in-law of one of our UTLA people. So we had a lot to say about that. And he would call me, I'd go down and look at his shop and he'd say, "What do you think about this?" And he had a great sensitivity for them. And when they put up the exhibit, I was going, "How are you going to get all those names up there?" And they came up with that creative screen. There are some areas in there, but that's okay, that's okay. And they didn't make all the exhibits busy like they have at the Japanese American museum. It's a sore point with me. They didn't ask. It's a modern museum, why didn't they do it in a modern way where you have theme, something to support it, you have theme, something to support it? All the new museums are that way. I've seen the one at, the Nubian Museum at Aswan, what a great museum that is. New Japanese museums, the one on Shikoku that was designed by I.M. Pei, great, great museum. You see the forest right in front of you. You don't have to identify all the trees, you just see it. But no one ever asked me, and I'm a museum rat. [Laughs]

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 2012 Densho. All Rights Reserved.