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DM: I think for many years, the Nisei, or second generation, who are our parents -- we are Sansei, which is third generation -- I think our parents felt shame or guilt about being involved in the camps. And as a result, they didn't really pass their stories on to their children until, I think there was more ethnic consciousness among Asian Americans and Japanese Americans. At that point, I think Sansei became more curious about their, quote, "roots," to find out what the history was involved with their parents who really didn't really talk about this very much. And as a result, there was generated, I think, tremendous interest by the Sansei of their Nisei parents. Through questioning and answers that you didn't receive before, you learn more and more about what happened because they didn't talk about it before. And they started talking about it and most recently, well, I guess I can't even use that with the Commission. Anyways, the parents, our parents became talking about the camp experience much, much more, and it's generated tremendous interest I think because it's a part of our heritage and our past that we never knew about. And it was, in a sense, like kind of a mystery unfolding, there's a whole period in your parents' life that you may have read about intellectually through books, but... learned about it in depth through the emotional experiences they went through, through their personal experiences being communicated to you. And I think it's been kind of a real dialectic thing, where the parents have become much more open about talking about it. And as a result, the children, or Sansei, would become much more curious. We'd ask more questions, we'd get much more information, create more questions, result in more answers.

Q: How is the three men viewed by the younger generations?

DM: I think the three Supreme Court cases involving what we call the resisters, Hirabayashi, Yasui and Korematsu, I think their cases are very symbolic of I think the type of courage that we now learn that our parents and everyone else went through. I think these men were just really unusual men in that most of the Japanese went along, there was so much confusion at the time, there was the threat of military force being applied, so nearly everybody went to camps. These three men chose to take their cases to court. I think their cases kind of have been symbolic of the type of resistance people really felt in their hearts but were unable to do because they were either too old, too tired, too young, too frightened to resist.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1984, 2010 Densho and Steven Okazaki. All Rights Reserved.