<Begin Segment 30>

KL: Those are the only really formal questions I have, but I wanted to give you the opportunity to add anything that I didn't ask about, or any other...

DW: I think we've rattled on a lot about things that we didn't think we had anything to say.

WJ: I will say this, in going over your tapes after you get back home, if you think you've missed something, don't hesitate to call and we'll provide what we can.

KL: I appreciate it. This was really interesting for me on a both professional and personal level, because having those connections to living in Tennessee for many years and working a little bit in Arkansas, and I lived in Alabama a little bit growing up. So those two Arkansas camps --

WJ: We won't hold that against you.

KL: -- yeah, I shouldn't have said that out loud -- are really interesting to me because now I have both the California connection and the kind of upper south connection, and it's interesting to compare.

WJ: We have talked about this a lot among ourselves when we get together, and kind of sad that we don't have more crystal memories, but we're just too young to have formed...

DW: Well, yeah. When I think about Rohwer... and like I say, my big, big permanent memory are remember guards at the gate, that was kind of awesome and scary. But they're things like you remember about kids, like the cat on your head, or the bike rack, or the hiding in the box, just kid's stuff, because that's what we were, yeah.

WJ: Didn't seem to hurt us at all growing up. Might have helped us, I don't know.

DW: I hope it did. I think if it did anything at all, hopefully it rubbed off in that it has something to do with the fact that none of us seemed to have any prejudice, and I don't know why. Unless we lived isolated from it or we were in it, I don't know.

WJ: I think one of the things, our dad was very anti-prejudice.

DW: Oh, he liked everybody. You said something derogatory term...

WJ: You said something about a black guy, he was right down your throat in a second.

DW: Humans were humans, and don't discriminate. Mother almost.

WJ: Yeah, almost.

DW: She had a little more prejudice. She used to get mad -- are we taping?

KL: We are, so we can wait on it.

DW: Yeah, she would be irritated about her name and living in Memphis. I think I can say that, because she says, "Every black criminal they picked up is named Willie." [Laughs] She says, "There's my name in the paper in the criminal section all the time." That's because of her name Willie. But, I mean, that's about as prejudiced as I ever heard her say anything. Yeah, she didn't like her name being attached to black criminals. No, that was what she said, because every time there's a Willie in there under the arrest thing, they're a black person. And she didn't like that.

KL: And they're a man. [Laughs]

DW: And they were men, yeah, men. Well, she had a masculine name that she had to put up with.

KL: I think that experience of being a minority is kind of a valuable one, and you guys all had that as children.

DW: Well, yes. We, I mean, extremely minority. There probably were a dozen kids in the, Caucasian kids in the camp, or maybe fifteen.

WJ: Not many more than that.

DW: No, and a couple of those were in high school. We just weren't to them... but maybe because of whatever, the families that lived there and the administration didn't have big families. Some of 'em were single.

WJ: Some of 'em were, kids were grown, and some of 'em were single. Twelve, fifteen families, but not too many kids.

DW: Not a lot of kids, yeah.

KL: Anything you wanted to add, Jim?

JJ: No. I can say I have so few, or any memories of Rohwer...

DW: Do you even remember the...

JJ: It all runs together with all the stories. But I'm glad you all are doing this.

DW: Oh, I am, too.

KL: Me, too. [Laughs]

DW: And then we've suddenly, it's sort of like talking about if you could have interviewed Mother. Well, Dad, of course.

WJ: Mother would have given them a lot more personal stories.

DW: Mother would have given stories, personal stories, yeah.

JJ: She would have still, when you ran out of tape, she'd still be talking.

DW: And that's when we started doing some of this ourselves, because we realized that we're getting to that point where any oral history we have, it's going to be gone pretty quick.

KL: And we'll definitely send you all copies of the DVD of this recording so you can share it with your families.

DW: Well, they'll like that, just because, you know, "Hey, my parents actually did something historical." [Laughs]

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.