Densho Digital Archive - Jane Wehrey Interview (denshovh-wjane-01-0004)

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JA: In your opinion, out of the constitutional issues, and the lessons come out of this?

JW: For me, I think, I think when we look at this whole experience, we are looking at the people who were in the camp and their experience and what they went through. I tend to look also at the people who are on the outside. What were they thinking, what power did they have to do anything about it? What could they have done about it? And I think that's really an issue for me because we don't know as we go down the road in history whether we may end up being on the inside or on the outside and I think everyone has to take a look at both, both aspects of, of what it's like to have this happening to you but also to have watched this happening to someone else. It's very, it's very difficult to know what you would do as a person and you know that you would like to do something, but what can you do?

JA: That's very nice, a good comment. You've known personally a number of the people who were at Manzanar. Could you give a sum evaluation of the spirit of people who were there when they were there and what you've seen afterwards in terms of just their attitudes and human spirit? I mean, whether it's, are people bitter, are people hopeful at that time? There was a drive for redress and things changed in the course of the aftermath, in your observation?

JW: I haven't really met that many people until maybe just the last ten years, and mostly through my work as a historian and some personal contacts. My sense is, of course, that for a long time there was nothing said and they kept it to themselves, they were silent. I, I understand that there was a split in the Japanese American community. There was bitterness and about, amongst themselves. The people that I've met are not, not bitter. And one person in particular is Mary Nomura as an example. She sees this time as a, that she was in the camp, as a time of growth, a time when she met her future husband. She and her husband Shi both were very, they understood what was happening to them, they understood the wrongs, but they were not bitter because they, they gained each other and they, I think they just don't see their lives that way at all. And I've been very impressed with the way, the way these people are, and again I ask myself if, if this happened to me, would I be able to feel this way? I'm not sure if I would or not.