Densho Digital Archive - Clifford Uyeda Interview (denshovh-uclifford-01-0011)

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FC: Your opinion of the work of Michi Weglyn? What is your opinion of the work of Michi Weglyn?

CU: You know, her book came out in 1976, and there were a lot of books that came out before then. But her work was the very first one that really made me feel that here is someone that's telling the story as it was and as it should be. I think you could, you could feel the anger in her work, and I thought, "Why shouldn't there be anger expressed? Because if it is, if you try to take the anger out of it, then it's a false statement. So therefore, the statement made by some of the other writers was too, well, I don't know whether it's what you call objective or not, but too much like a documentary, it did not have the real punch that Michi's work had. So I still, and to me it's amazing that a person who was not a trained scholar, in the sense that university scholars are, could go out and do the type of research that she had done, and to come up with the information. Even for many, many years, even for decades after her work came out, if you really wanted to learn about the camps, the place to go was still Michi's work, not in some of the other work that came out. So I think her work still stands as possibly the best on the camps.

FC: Talk a little about her research. What kind of research did she do?

CU: Well, I think she did a very thorough research in every angle. For even about the Peruvians who were brought here, you have to go to her book to get a pretty good picture of what happened. Since then, of course, book has come out, several books have come out, but she was still the first to talk about it. And to me it's most amazing that the two most complete and the best researchers in Japanese American history happens to be both women who were not trained as a researcher: Aiko Herzig and Michi Weglyn, yet they have done more research on the Japanese American than any other person.

FC: Were these Japanese American women, were they interned?

CU: I know Michi was... I don't know about Aiko. Was she? She's from L.A., so most likely she was.

FC: James Omura and the resisters... any opinion?

CU: No, I really did not know James, know about James Omura except for what I had read. And I did meet James Omura, and as an individual, when you meet with him, he's very low-key, he's not a dynamic type of individual. But you sense something, however, is that you sense something very deep in him, something that he has a very firm conviction, to which you're not going to change him, and that which is strong, which is a strong point. It's amazing that a person like he was able to articulate his feelings. The other Japanese Americans -- he articulated what the large number of the Japanese Americans could not articulate. And I think so therefore he became their spokesperson, really. But of course he was so maligned by the JACL that he became a, sort of ostracized, almost really a recluse in a sense. Because he was not known in the Japanese American community at all, because I didn't know about him, but I think he is one of the... I just, I read some of statements that he had, statements at the hearing... what is that hearing that they started in 19... Tolan Committee. Tolan Committee thing, and then some of these editorials that he had written in the Denver Rocky Shimpo. Those I, when I saw those, then I realized that there was a man that was really, really articulated what the Nisei should be feeling and did feel. But, but he was so maligned by the JACL that people started to look upon him as being an oddball, that you should not believe anything that he says. And I think this was a sad thing.

One other thing which comes to my mind right now is Anne Fisher. I corresponded with Anne Fisher for quite some time. Because when it's, her book came out, I got it, in fact, I got boxes full, and I was very impressed with some of the statements that she made. And she told me that she was so anti-JACL, so I said, "How come?" But she said, "You know, because the JACL prevented me from having this book published in United States." So I said, "How did that happen?" and she said what she, when she wrote the book, Exile of a Race, she said that she thought, she wrote it in 1940s, soon after the camps closed. And she felt that JACL would be very much interested in having this book published, because she felt that she told the story very accurately and correctly, and she sent a copy of the manuscript to JACL. But the JACL, she said, according to her, instead of helping her, had notified many of the publisher that this is not the book to be published. And so she could not get any publishers to handle her book. Because she said the JACL was very powerful then, because they had been so cooperative with the government, the government was now going to cooperate with them. And she was very bitter about the fact that the JACL did not help her. And she said, JACL told her, she said to me, that the reason why they object to the book is because it steps on too many toes, and she felt that it should, story should be told. But the JACL said, "No, it's not the time to publish this book," and for that reason she said she had to go to Canada and have the book published up there. And so she, she was very anti-JACL for a long time. When I met and when I talked to her over the phone and also by letter, she was one person that was extremely anti-JACL. And I was inquisitive why, because she said, from what she told me. I was surprised when I heard that. Why would the JACL try to... here was somebody, a Caucasian woman, who wants to talk about, the, what happened during the camp, camp experience, and to give her side of the story, her opinion, which was different from the official story. And yet, why does the JACL intercede and say, "Don't publish this book"? I thought that was no, that was not the place for JACL. I thought they would welcome it, but instead she said they did not, they discouraged her from publishing, publishing the book.