Densho Digital Archive - Shiuko Sakai Interview (denshovh-sshiuko-01-0022)

<Begin Segment 22>

KL: Are you involved in Japanese American cultural events or activities here in Portland, in Oregon?

SS: I volunteer at the Legacy Center, that's it.

KL: What is your work there?

SS: I... what do you call it? I work on the file, the research file. Now that everybody's older and dying, they're getting rid of all the things they've accumulated during the years, like various clippings, or anything to do with the Japanese or Japanese culture, they send them to the center. I have to go through those and decide --

KL: Is it fun?

SS: Sometimes, yes, it's very interesting. I have to go read the... decide whether something should go in the file or should be thrown out. That's what I do. It's interesting. I go once a week. I learn a lot.

KL: I think -- I always say this and I'm wrong -- but I think I just have one more question just as kind of a wrap up. This is going to go in the archives, and you're kind of speaking to the future with this recording, too, and I wonder if there's any advice or anything from your experience that you would want to share with people who might watch this in the future?

SS: Don't send anything that doesn't pertain to the Japanese or the evacuation. Sometimes we get too much, too many things, end up throwing some of them out.

KL: I've already thought of one other one, this always happens. We were talking a little bit during one of the breaks while you were out of the room about what you gain and what you lose by speaking about experiences like the evacuation, and by keeping quiet about things like the evacuation. Do you think it's important to speak about this time?

SS: Yes, I think so. I think it's interesting when I listen to other people talk about their experiences. And for me to talk about it, keep thinking about, start remembering that way back in my mind.

KL: So it helps you put part of your memory together.

SS: It helps me also, yes. I think so.

KL: Is there anything I left out that you wanted, that you came, you were thinking you wanted to talk about that I haven't asked?

SS: No, I don't think so. Maybe I talked too much.

KL: No. [Laughs] No, not at all.

SS: Some of it was kind of not interesting at all.

KL: This is gonna be number 361, I think, maybe, of Manzanar's oral histories that Manzanar has conducted, and they're just, I have only gotten to watch a small number of them since I started working here, and you're probably the tenth person maybe that I've gotten to interview. But people's experiences and their story, I mean, there's much in common, but there's also so much that is individual, and so I think it's, I really appreciate that you would share your stories and your memories.