Densho Digital Archive - George Yoshinaga Interview (denshovh-ygeorge

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AL: Of course, with the redress movement there's also been over the last decade or more, movement to preserve some of the sites like Manzanar of course is established as an historic site in 1992, Minidoka in 2001, Tule Lake in 2008.

GY: Topaz, is Topaz on the list?

AL: Most of them are national historic landmarks, but those right now it's Minidoka, Manzanar and Tule Lake in the National Park Service. There are some people who hope that Heart Mountain will be part of the Park Service. We don't know if that will happen or not because the Park Service does not create the sites, Congress or the President hands them over to us and says, okay now run this. But we have provided grants to Heart Mountain through the Japanese American Confinement Sites grant program. And then we met you last year at the Heart Mountain reunion. Have you been involved at all with Heart Mountain, Wyoming, foundation?

GY: That's the whole thing. If somebody asks me I'd really like to join in but I'm not going to volunteer. Maybe that's not the right attitude but if somebody will come up and say, "Hey, you work for the paper in camp? So you had your hand on lot of things that other people didn't have." But like Bacon Sakatani was in the sixth grade and he's the leader of the Heart Mountain. I wanted to ask you one thing. Do you have a veteran's plaque at Manzanar? People who were living in Manzanar who went into service?

AL: We just put up one that's a temporary one this last April that has all the names. And the reason it's temporary right now is that we want to make sure we have all the names correct before we do a more permanent one. But we have it in... so you haven't seen the exhibit at Manzanar, right?

GY: No.

AL: Okay so there's a kind of wall it looks like the wall of a barracks and it has a thing about military service, it has a thing about military service and it has a thing about Sadao Munemori, and then it's just a little panel that says those who served and it's got the two hundred and something names on there. So that's where we put it as sort of an educational thing because now that's it's a national historic site we try not to put plaques kind of all over the site. But we do have the Blue Star Highway plaque that was put up in the early 1990s.

GY: 'Cause I remember Heart Mountain was one of the first things they did.

AL: Oh, they had the honor roll.

GY: Yeah.

AL: Manzanar did not to my knowledge have an honor roll. They had the blue star banner that hung in the camp auditorium but I've never seen any, I don't think there was that we're aware of anyway, a historic honor roll. So you would be on the honor roll at Heart Mountain though.

GY: I am. That's why I was wondering about Manzanar 'cause I haven't heard anything about Manzanar doing something for the vets you know.

AL: Yeah, we did not to my knowledge we didn't historically have one. We did list the names in the exhibit and we do have a section on the MIS and on the 442nd. But I really hope that you will have the chance to see it yourself 'cause it's kind of hard to obviously to explain but I can also send you pictures.

GY: I was thinking about you know, what's his name? Cory Shiozaki? Yeah, he and my second son went to school together so he sends me material on his, he's going to give a talk in September?

AL: Yeah, he's going to go up there Labor Day weekend. Cory's worked with us a lot. In fact in some oral histories he's volunteered to be a camera guy. Of course, I could sit here all day and I don't want to keep you from winning your fortune in the slots, but just a couple questions.

GY: I'm just feeling, oh, I got rich during this period.

AL: When you look at Heart Mountain though now being preserved, you know, they have the learning center, interpretive learning center, well, first of all, have you personally been back to Heart Mountain?

GY: No. Three times when my son was at the academy in Colorado Springs I threatened to drive up to Heart Mountain but somehow I guess something happens and I never do.

AL: Do you want to see it?

GY: Oh, yeah, I'm waiting for Bacon to... they're going to have something up there. And he said that come on up for this particular thing but I wasn't...

AL: They're having something next week I think on like the 19th or 20th but then next year is supposed to be the big unveiling. I know they have a company right now working on exhibits for it. I haven't seen what they're doing. I've just seen little pictures of the barracks that they've rebuilt. But when you think about in years to come, because like I said in my email the other day, I mean there will be a time when all of us are gone, even young Daniel. When you think about in years to come and people go to Heart Mountain, or go to Manzanar, and learn about this part of history, what would you want to communicate to people? What do you want them to know?

GY: That it was a critical period in the life of Japanese Americans but not the way it has been pictured in recent years. That like everything else in life there are experiences that some are positive and some are negative and I think that because of the way the people that lived there survived, I think they should look more at the positive side to show the character of the Japanese Americans. The question that I always ask is if you took other ethnic groups, how would it have been? Would they all try to escape or a lot of people ask me, "How come you people didn't try to escape from there?" Because of our philosophy of life that we just accepted something that happened. That's the message I would like to give out. Not sound like it was a Nazi concentration camp where people were being beaten up and killed. And that's the one phase of this entire situation that I think is often neglected. And I feel fortunate that since I am a writer, whether it's good or bad it doesn't matter, that I can get this message out to people.