Densho Digital Archive
Manzanar National Historic Site Collection
Title: M. Jack Takayanagi Interview
Narrator: M. Jack Takayanagi
Interviewer: Richard Potashin
Location: Independence, California
Date: April 22, 2008
Densho ID: denshovh-tmjack-01-0011

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RP: And what do you -- we'll finish up here, Jack. But how did Manzanar shape your life, your future? What did you take from Manzanar that you incorporate into your life as a divinity student and then becoming a pastor? Do you preach some of the lessons and stories of Manzanar to your... tell us about that.

MT: Okay. When I left Manzanar and went to those guard centers down there to those two, what do they call those, guardhouses? And the sentries were both standing there, and I walked through, and without saying you can't, and I was free to go out to the other side of the street, other side of the highway to catch a bus. I wasn't being taken in, I just walked across the highway and stood there and waited for the Santa Fe bus. Not the Greyhound, it didn't come that way. Santa Fe bus came, red bus, commercial bus, going to take me to Reno. And as I stood there, Mary, my mother and dad, were standing on the other side. And up the way a little bit were the Shonien kids who had come, and they were all pressing against the barbed wire, and I could see them. And when I got on, the bus came, and I got on the bus and walked to the back of the bus to get the back seat so I could look out the window, and everyone was waving, and the Shonien kids particularly were all pressed against the barbed wire fence waving. And I said, "As long as I'm alive and happy, energy, this will never happen again." I meant that in my ministry, eventually got to be a ministry of justice, and that we have to be just and loving, kind and good, and overcome our differences in a peaceful, positive way. So we don't be putting... I don't know, putting kids who had no parents, orphans, into that situation. So that's what I told them. And I think that's always been there, that presence, in my ministry, in there, I think. I felt it had to be a ministry of justice and right.

RP: Well, thank you so much, Jack, for sharing your time.

MT: Well, thank you.

RP: It's a real honor to have you here, and hearing the stories was really powerful.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.