<Begin Segment 12>

MA: Did you talk about camp at all with your friends, especially when you were younger, when you came back to Salt Lake City?

AH: There was nothing in common to talk about. I mean, they had no way to relate, and no one really talked about, you know, my parents never talked about it. And I'm learning now that there's, some of the people are really quite bitter and now I understand why, because everything was taken away from 'em, everything, we were completely homeless. And see, like I say, I didn't realize that until just a few years ago. There's a lot, there's a lot... not a lot, but little by little, expressions of bitterness is coming out. There was a lady who -- there's two ladies, they're older than I am, and one of them... see, I talk about it freely because I was so young and protected from all this harshness, you know. But this one lady, she's a few years older than I am, and she would say, "I don't even want to talk about," because somebody approached her, and she says, "Don't ever talk about this to me."

MA: About camp, you mean?

AH: Camp -- or World War II. I don't, I think she might have gone to camp, but I'm not sure. But she's old enough to experience the harshness of the discrimination, and she said, "I was offered the $20,000 but I refused it. And don't ever bring this up again, ever." And then another one expressed, a Caucasian friend, when they were young, probably teenagers, it was after the war and everything, saying, the Caucasian friend said, "Oh, there's these popular singers that are coming," or it was a popular movie that's coming into town. "Let's all go together, we probably have to wait in line because it's so popular." But that lady, she's passed away now, but she said that, "I'll never, I'll never go with you because that's all we did in camp is wait in line for our food, wait in line for doctor's appointment, wait in line to do this, wait in line to do that. And I'll never, ever get in a situation where I have to wait in line." And then, see, I'm just reading about that now, and I didn't realize that. I sort of did, but I didn't realize how bad it is. Like there's a book that I just read in Tanforan, there were 8,000 of us, they only had three mess halls. And so they had to wait in line forever to get all three meals. So that just came out, this has all been classified until 2006.

MA: Right. So people obviously carried a lot of strong emotions still about their experiences.

AH: Right. And that, people didn't say anything for a lot of reasons. And my parents, I didn't feel any bitterness. I think they were just so busy and everything raising kids, there were four of us, and raising money, saving money for our colleges and all that. But there was other people who didn't say anything because they were very bitter like this lady. I'm sure she's not alone. And I have to say at this point, there are very, there are heroes in my life where the very few people pretty much forced us to say anything. Because it would have been all swept under the carpet and everybody would have forgotten it. We wouldn't even have this interview, you know, it would have just gotten away. But Jane Beckwith, she's, she's my hero. In the 1980s, she forced us to say something. She's living in Delta, she's an English teacher, and she knew this history and she was shaking all of us, saying, "You've gotta say something." And people like her and a few others, John Tateishi on a national level, and a few young attorneys, third generation after Topaz, found out the atrocities. And even then nobody wanted to talk about it. I mean, John Tateishi, our leader, tried to get support from the people from World War II, no one wanted to, they didn't want to bring up, open up any can of worms anymore. And like I say, all, there were a lot of reasons why people didn't want to say anything. And so the very few people that agreed to testify in front of the congressional party for redress, we have a lot to be thankful for because they did express the concern. And that's the reason why the bill was passed federally, that the Park Service is going to establish all ten camps.

MA: Right, that was passed just recently.

AH: Yeah, recently. And so we have a lot of people to be thankful for, and there are very few. Because John (Tateishi), I know when I met him -- he doesn't even know who I am, but he came as a speaker. And I cried and I gave him a big hug because he sacrificed his personal life for all of us. He left his family for months at a time to lobby for us in D.C., and I don't think people really realize what he's done. He believed in this, and he got young attorneys to get involved (to get over $20,000, redress and apology).

<End Segment 12> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.