<Begin Segment 13>

MA: Did you discuss camp or anything like that with your friends, or was that a topic of discussion at all when you were in junior high and high school?

TN: You know, not many people asked me about the internment when I was in high school. And my Caucasian friends around my house, I don't think they ever asked me about it, although they may have known about it. And I find it kind of ironic that here it is, what is it, sixty years after internment, and there is more interest in the internment sixty, fifty years after it happened than the first twenty-five years after it happened. There's calls for interviews for this, and there's been half a dozen large front page newspaper articles about it.

MA: Why do you think that shift happened?

TN: Well, I think it's hard to believe that people's constitutional rights could just be disregarded in such a blatant manner, and it shows how racism can dictate many things, and hysteria, wartime hysteria. Well, as you know, the government did reimburse the surviving internees with $20,000. I think it happened in 1988, but that was, I don't know, some thirty-five, forty years after it happened, and the people that really needed that money had all passed away.

MA: The Isseis?

TN: Right, and so it was a little bit late, and their families didn't benefit even though they were sons and daughters. But only the people living like myself, and that was not the majority.

MA: Was there ever any -- talking about redress -- was there ever any, I mean, your family, it seemed like, was one of the few that had resettled to Salt Lake City. Was there any talk between the two, sort of, groups within the Japanese American community in Salt Lake City about redress, or any sort of tension or feelings about redress in terms of people in Salt Lake City who lived there before the war experienced discrimination but didn't necessarily get compensated? Did you hear any of that talk?

TN: You mean the ones that did not evacuate?

MA: Right.

TN: No, I can't recall any talk about that, although they were affected, only in a different way than we were. But at least they were able to keep their homes. Although a few of them were deported to Montana, these special camps they had.

MA: Right, the Department of Justice camps?

TN: Right, uh-huh.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Topaz Museum. All Rights Reserved.