Densho Digital Repository - Aaron Zajic Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-1-6)

<Begin Segment 6>

EK: Do you have recollections of particular individual claimants that you have anecdotes about that you'd be willing to share?

AZ: I shouldn't say their names, but I do remember that there were some folks that, I would send them a request for information, and it would come back undeliverable. So then I would track 'em down again and call them and send them the thing, and it would come back undeliverable again. And apparently this one particular person, had multiple homes that they lived in at different times of the year, and I just couldn't track her down because by the time I would get the stuff out to her, she was on to her next address. So it wasn't like you had a cell phone that stuck with you wherever you went. If we couldn't find you at that location, it just took a lot of time. So I remember just over two years or so, trying to get all the paperwork from this particular person. And just a lot of really nice people. I, somewhere, have a folder of thank you notes of people that I spoke to and worked with and then they would send me, to our office, I'd be processing the mail and it would come to me. People would say, "You have a document," and I'd open it up and it would just be a card saying, "Thanks for, I got the letter, I got the check, and thank you for helping me."

EK: So that's actually a great segue. I wanted to next talk about the personal impact that working at ORA has had on you. I mean, what would you say is the biggest impact in hindsight, having had the opportunity to work at ORA?

AZ: Well, I didn't... back to how I got the job, I didn't know a lot about it. I mean, I'd heard about it a little bit in school, but I didn't really know that much about it. And I was working at my mom's elementary school library, just helping her file books and stuff. And she had a book, and I can't find it, somewhere I have it, I would have brought it today if I could have found it, about a little girl that was interned and how it impacted her life. And I read that before coming to the job, and that was my... I looked it up in an encyclopedia, too, but what really impacted me more and gave me more information about it than an encyclopedia entry was the story of a girl getting kind of ripped up from her friends and not quite understanding why she had to go to this place. And then her life in the internment center and how, when it was time to go home, it wasn't all that great either, because home wasn't really home anymore.