<Begin Segment 3>

JS: So I think after decades of being suppressed, the Japanese community is now vocalizing what it really feels, and the current movement for redress and reparations has really brought together Issei, Nisei and Sansei, and restored a lot of sense of pride and dignity in the Japanese community, and placed the real guilt of the incarceration on the on the American government and off the shoulders of our parents.

BS: I guess while Janice was talking, I was thinking of how different my experience has been in my awareness and how it has grown and developed over the past few years. My parents, or my mother, has always been really vocal about the camps. She's always explained that they went to camp and she even has photos of rural Arkansas which is the farthest east, farthest east that the camps were. But as I... growing up and looking at these photos, I never got the sense that this was something wrong. It shows, the photos that she has shows them playing in the snow, throwing snowballs and you know, just having a good time . So it was much later and reading bits and pieces about the history that was developing at that time, that I learned that there was something really wrong and unjust about the camps. And that, then that growing awareness made me realize that I needed to find out things for myself as far as my understanding. So I started questioning, not only my mother, but my -- well, not my father directly, 'cause I always, he never offered or volunteered information. So I kind of questioned around him, you know, when there were people, when there were Nisei in the, in the room, I would ask them, "Well, why didn't you fight?" or, "How could you go through this?" And they would explain to me. So my awareness was not, in comparison to Janice, was not quite the same because I didn't have the opportunity to go to Asian American Studies courses. Because the Japanese community in San Diego is almost nonexistent and very dispersed, so there wasn't the same kind of need or demand as there was up here in the Bay Area, so I was more, I had to go out and find out what exactly the camps were all about.

JS: What did your, the Nisei friends tell you about what they were experiencing, or how did they view the camps?

BS: Well, when I asked them exactly why didn't they resist, they said that it happened so fast that there just wasn't time to really think about it. And so I guess, for myself, at that time, just understanding something that could happen that quickly where you couldn't think about, just kind of boggled my mind. And with that, a growing awareness and an understanding started to grow.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1983, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.