<Begin Segment 20>

KL: I want to back up for just a moment. You have mentioned Sue Embrey, and I wanted to ask you about her, just what, how you knew her, what stood out about her, would you give us kind of a description of her, what she was like?

JO: Unfortunately, I met her... well, I met her at the panel discussion at the museum in 2003, or 2002. It was when the book first came out, I think it was 2002, but I really didn't say anything to her. And so... but when I went to the committee meetings, she really was too, not too well in 2005. In late 2004, 2005, in time for the next pilgrimage, and so she wasn't really all that well, and never talked to me.

KL: What about in 2002? What stood out about her in those panel...

JO: She was really, you know what stood out most was Archie Miyatake talking too much. He really liked to ramble on, and I would really rather have heard her talk, but she had very little to say as compared to Archie. So it was kind of like, uhhh.

KL: Yeah. She's someone I'm so curious about, I never met her.

JO: But you know, you can see her interview online. But she was always a very soft-spoken, and but I think she was also very determined, too. Because I attribute Manzanar being in the National Park system to her, because of her insistence. If she had let California run the program, it would have probably been nowhere near what it is now. And, of course, all through the nation, I mean, all throughout the camps, all the camps that are now part of National Park, all because of her and her insistence, right? It's really true, it's true. And, of course, if you talk to Bruce Embrey, he's actually the best authority about his mother.

KL: I hope to someday have a long conversation with him about her.

JO: Well, I keep telling... and you know this pilgrimage is the tenth anniversary of the opening of the interpretive center. So I said it is a very good time to honor her for her thinking, for her forward thinking, but I don't know what's gonna happen, because I'm not that influential with the Manzanar Committee, I don't know if you heard all of my problems.

KL: I haven't, I'm not sure... you can share them if you want to, or we can talk later.

JO: I don't care who knows, because I really feel like I want to continue what Sue Embrey started when she used the terms "concentration camp" to refer to our, where we were. She said it's, it was a concentration camp, and she wrote an essay on it. But I also, before I even read that essay, I had read Lost and Found (by Karen Ishizuka).

KL: Michi Weglyn?

JO: No, no, no. I read Michi Weglyn's book also, I did a lot of this research work, and coming up with my essay on the use of the term "concentration camp," which was on the blog. And so this last... you know, after we, okay, so JACL then put out The Power of Words, and we adopted it, I mean, we went along with it, we said we approved, this is a good thing to have, a documentation of uniformity of words, that we won't use the term "internment" anymore, "internee." Refers to alien, "enemy aliens" in a time of war, and we were citizens. I was not an "internee." So with the last pilgrimage, I reviewed the DVD that our videographer took, and the emcee used the term constantly. And, in fact, emphasized it: "internee." Excuse me. And something that we had discussed, I mean, discussed all along. And Bruce is very adamant on using the correct terminology also. So I brought it up at the meeting, that I thought it was not appropriate for us to use this after all of our discussions about this sort of thing. Well, some of the committee people did not like what I said, mainly the person who said the words. [Laughs] Plus somebody else who doesn't do very much for the committee, I don't even know why she's on the committee. But some people were very vocal and think that I was out of place, and I really don't think so. And so I stand my ground, and I don't need to be very involved with the committee if they're going to be that way. So that's mainly what the beef is about.

[Interruption]

KL: I've caught you at an interesting time, obviously.

JO: Yeah, and no matter what I say, if I put out a little memo about when we're going to meet, all this criticism comes back, like what's the criticism about a memo? "Oh, you're confusing the issue," excuse me. We're going to, not willingly, but we're being co-sponsors of that Block 14 project, songfest, the community songfest, I don't know if you're going.

[Interruption]

KL: So we just took a quick break, and Joyce was, we were talking about prompts to get involved in Manzanar and preservation and stuff. And we were saying that the reprint of Born Free and Equal was one, and then Joyce was going to tell us another thing.

JO: Well, it got me to thinking was, when I went to the pilgrimage in 2000, we went to visit the Independence Museum, and Rose Ochi was there. I didn't really know her, I just knew of her, and she said to me, "You have got to get involved." I don't know why, but it just got me thinking.

KL: You don't have any idea why?

JO: No. I have no idea. But, you know, when somebody says that to you, you start thinking, anyway, I did. "What did she mean by that, I've got to get involved?" And I thought maybe she meant the Manzanar Committee. But you know, when I attended the meetings at that time, it was at this Rei Kai's Kitchen in Little Tokyo (Towers), and there was always a lot of people there, all these different people there, and they were all people that helped at the pilgrimage every year, you know, selling things, bringing flowers, whatever, making food, helping with the musubis, which I don't even do to this day. I don't like making any of that stuff, so I don't do it. But anyway, that was the start of it all. But the main interest was after I saw that Sue was getting weak, and she was being hospitalized, then I thought, well, at least I could come and maybe have something to say. But most of the time, the pilgrimages were kind of a set routine, and everybody had things they had to do. So it really didn't involve me that much. And only recently, after Fred resigned as treasurer, Fred Bradford resigned as treasurer, and I took over, then I became more involved in the meetings and things. That's when I discovered that money wasn't paid to L.A. Academy.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2013 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.