Densho Digital Archive - Dale Minami Interview II (denshovh-mdale-03-0002)

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Q: Dale, could you tell us about Fred, describe Fred as a person, his shyness, or his discomfort with this attention, how's he's been reacting to what's been going on.

DM: It's been kind of interesting to me because I think what I've seen through Fred, go through like an evolutionary process. When I first met Fred, his shyness was legendary. We, he hardly invited us into his house when we came to his door. He took us in, we talked a little about his case. He was very guarded, very, he didn't talk a lot about his experience, asked some questions. And as I left, though, I got a hint to his personality from his wife, Kathryn. She said, "Fred is a very deep person. He's not real talkative, but he's real deep." And I thought about that and I thought about what he had to go through during the camp experience, during the jail experience, and it occurred to me that it made a lot of sense to me. In the first meeting, they were, Fred and his wife were very adamant against any kind of publicity. They didn't want reporters calling up, they didn't want to necessarily have to go to a press conference. We told them at the start you could do as much or as little as you want. You know, we will protect you if you need to be protected, we would not give out your phone number. As it turned out, though, Fred became more willing to take some risks in terms of talk to the press. And it the past year and a half or two years that we've been working on the case, Fred has really, really changed in my mind. And I think his initial shyness has really been overcome by his sense of, his sense of right, I think by the support he's been given through the Japanese American and other communities, I think Fred now feels he's able and willing to talk about these experiences very openly. And as a result, I don't, I couldn't classify him as shy anymore. I think the man is, has exhibited the strength personally, that he always had, but was not about to let just anybody come into his world. And now he's much more willing to talk about the types of things he had to go through, what he thought, what he felt, etcetera.