Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: George Yoshinaga Interview
Narrator: George Yoshinaga
Interviewer: Alisa Lynch
Location: Las Vegas, Nevada
Date: August 10, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-ygeorge_5-01-0022

<Begin Segment 22>

AL: When were you aware of the Manzanar pilgrimage? When was the first time you ever heard of that?

GY: The what program?

AL: The Manzanar pilgrimage?

GY: Oh. You know, many years ago before all this, you started all this stuff, a guy named Tom Tayama who was in Manzanar said, "Let's drive up there. Help me drive up there, I want to see what the old place looks like." So when we went there, there was nothing, we walked around, and then so I was kind of surprised when they started this movement to develop Manzanar.

AL: If you have a chance tonight if you stop by our table you can see some of the movie footage of a lot, there's a lot of stuff there that was actually buried like Merritt Park and some of the gardens and stuff like that. There's a lot more now then like I first went there in 1980 and it's a whole different place but it's not that we're... well, we have built a few new things but there's a lot of stuff that was there and buried. And I think a lot of people would say they buried memories, you know. And I know one of the quotes I think from that first pilgrimage and I don't know if it was Sue that said or somebody else, I think it was somebody else, and they said, "How many people are buried here at Manzanar?" And the person's reply was a whole generation or a whole people of Japanese Americans. So I'm curious what your perspective was on when people first started talking about the camps, there's the movie, Farewell to Manzanar in 1973 or something like that and a lot of people talk about quote, "Manzanar," but what they're really talking about is the overall experience. It's just that Manzanar is the one everybody knows.

GY: Yeah.

AL: What was your perspective when people started talking about it and when was the first time you started publicly started talking about it?

GY: Well, I always wanted something done that we could remember that era of our history. And after Tom passed away I always wanted to go back and see what it was like since you people took over and developed all this you know. And every year when they have that pilgrimage I say I'm going but I never got to go.

AL: We would all invite you to come up sometime and if you come out at the pilgrimages that's great but it's a really busy time. So maybe sometime you could come up when it's a little less busy and we could actually show you around the site, show you some of the gardens and stuff and have a little more time to... you know. You could do it instead of the cocktail waitresses in Vegas you can do a thing on the cocktail rangers at Manzanar in your column. But what was the first time you publicly wrote about it or spoke about it?

GY: Several times. I can't remember the exact date but I... that's why I wanted to go back and do another update on what I observed, you know. And now I forgot how long it took to drive up there.

AL: About four hours. So when did you first meet Sue Embrey?

GY: Gee, it's quite a while. Now when people ask me about different dates and stuff I draw a blank.

AL: Well not so much the date but like in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s?

GY: Yeah, it was before that.

AL: What did you think when you started hearing people like her speak out?

GY: Well, when somebody I know speaks out, I know what their background is or why they are thinking that way. so it's not objectionable to me. The thing that really kind of aggravates me is as I said, when somebody that was four or five years old now gets up and they're the spokesman for the evacuation. That turns me off.

AL: Which is why we're really grateful that you're willing to speak because it's different... it is very different and we notice that even... I mean, I've only been at Manzanar nine years but the people that we're interviewing now are a decade younger than the people we started the oral history program specifically for Manzanar in 2002. We've done about 200 interviews, but it is changing, we still occasionally will have somebody who's a hundred years old but that's rare. And so you're getting down to the younger kids.

GY: I'd like to hear more from people who are in the late eighties. And that's why you know, Norm Mineta, his father and my father were good friends and I always tell him, I say, "You know, Norm, when you open your mouth people listen because you're a high rated politician." But I said, "I'm going to tell you, you don't know what you're talking about." So now when we meet at public events he just walks away when he sees me. [Laughs]

AL: What is it that he says that you think he doesn't know what he's talking about?

GY: Well, he talks about, of course everybody talks about the barbed wire and the guard towers, but there's more to camp life than that you know.

AL: Like what kind of things?

GY: I asked him, I said, "Were you aware that we used to have dances every week?" When a guy's five, six years old, what does he know about camp dances? That's where we people from different areas of the country that were put together, that's how we got to know each other. That's one of the things that I feel was an important part of our life is that I got to know so many people that if it wasn't for evacuation I would have never had the opportunity to do so. And today I wouldn't be here, I'd be driving a tractor on our farm. [Laughs]

<End Segment 22> - Copyright &copy; 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.