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WH: Now, when you came back from camp, didn't someone famous from CBS contact you? Tell me about that.

ES: Yes.

WH: What happened?

ES: I think at that particular time, they wanted to borrow my film.

WH: It was who? Walter...

ES: Walter Cronkite was the first one to ask me as soon as I returned home in January after camp was open -- I mean, coast was open to all persons of Japanese ancestry. And somehow or other, he found out that I returned with films taken in camp, and he wanted to see 'em so badly. Well, we had a number of long conversations, because I only knew him on the broadcasting station. I enjoyed his program, but never made a deal of any nature with him, or talked directly with him. So after a short conversation, time to time, I finally decided I'd loan it to him. So when he got the film, he looked at it and says, "You fellows had a beautiful time, wonderful time, vacation." I says, "You looked at the bright side only. Look at the other side, and the other side is gloomy. We were uprooted from home, we were put in this desolate place in a barrack like this, in a small room, and we lost all our business. We had nothing but what we could carry, our life was just destroyed." "So," he says, "I'll show the other side." So he made the picture, "Pride and Shame," and that picture told the story of we evacuees behind the barbed wire fence.

WH: What, can you describe for me what Walter Cronkite did not see, the other side? You know, in your film it would be easy to look and see all of the fun dances and games.

ES: Yeah, dances, and the crops growing.

WH: What did we not see in that film?

ES: You did not see our inner feelings, our inner losses, what we were uprooted from. And the life in camp was nothing but dreary. In other words, we can get up in the morning and have breakfast, lunch and dinner, but what can we do? There's no occupation or anything that they can do, or anything they can look forward to. To our friends it's really sad. They worked hard and had families sending them to school. They're uprooted from school, no proper education, no books or writing material. And speaking of no books and writing material, I can tell you a case in Santa Anita. Santa Anita, as I was the Caucasian shuttle bus driver, I picked up people, personnel that worked in the administration, the lower-class people, because the upper class went on their own car. I think purely the reason for that was that lower-class people were liable to smuggle drugs in and marijuana and liquor, so they weren't able to come in by their own car, so they had to ride my shuttle to get in. Anyway, one day I went to the outer gate, here's Maryknoll sister, and she told me, "What can I do for you people?" And I began to think, well, I visited a number of these little classrooms in the downstairs of the Santa Anita racetrack grandstand, and the teachers are scribbling on the concrete wall to teach these little kids, because they were operating, I mean, uprooted in the middle of school, and they got no textbooks, no pencil, tablet to write on. Just the teachers scribbling on the concrete wall, it gets hard, and I felt sorry for these future generation persons of Japanese ancestry. So the next day, I went to pick up and here comes Maryknoll sister again, they had bundles of stuff, and gosh, I just cried in tears to see that some people really understand and would like to help us. To this day, I think a great deal of the Maryknoll sister and how the Christian or the Methodist, or Maryknoll's Catholic people have helped us to keep the spirit up and help us.

That is one of the most prized thing of my life, that there are people who are, think of us, and we're able to return. That is true in, right in the Santa Clara Valley. We belong to several co-ops, they never canceled our membership, we belong to several organizations, they never canceled our membership, and I kept corresponding, and when I returned fifteen days before the coast was opened, they opened their arms to us. Even the professor at San Jose State had a party for me, returning.

WH: What did he say?

ES: Pardon?

WH: What did he say when he had a party for you?

ES: Well, I couldn't say very much, I was just so delighted to have people understand and welcome us, because they're teaching our youngsters the Constitution of the United States, and the rights of the American citizen. Here we in the United States are conglomerate of people who are of different background. They're a conglomerate of people who have not applied citizenship, but they can get citizenship. But we, our fathers and mothers and grandfathers and grandmothers, they wanted to become American citizens, but there are laws against becoming American citizens. They wanted to hold property, but they had alien property laws here. They want, their relations want to immigrate to the United States. The immigration law of 1924 prevented them from coming in, and that's why we were hurt terribly, persons of Japanese ancestry. But we Yonsei or Gosei don't understand, and that's why I'd like to see them learn a little bit of history of our parents, grandfather, grandmother, grandparents and so forth, how they suffered, so that we can succeed. Now we have succeeded. By having Japanese ancestry in city, county, state, federal government, and that made a great difference.

WH: When you came back --

ES: Great, great difference.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2005 Densho and The Japanese American Film Preservation Project. All Rights Reserved.