Densho Digital Archive - George Kiyo Wakatsuki Interview (denshovh-wgeorge-01-0017)

<Begin Segment 17>

AL: So unlike most people in Manzanar, the book, your sister's not the first person to write a book about camp, because there were other ones that came out in the '40s, '50s. But probably I think it's safe to say the first really well-known book that got known in the larger public. What has it been like for you to have your family portrayed first in the book and in the movie? Were you involved at all in creating the book?

GW: In creating the book, Jeanne and her husband Jim Houston were... well Jim was mostly, he's the writer in the family. And Jeanne would, they would come over and get us together and we would talk, and they would tape record everything. And from all these ideas that they get from the family, brothers-in-law, sisters-in-law that were in camp, that it would be recorded. I don't know if Jeanne has these recordings anymore, but then that's how the book became. And then the movie was something different because this guy, like I said, John Korty, read the book, he liked it, and I guess he contacted Jeanne and really wanted to make a movie from the book. And so they collaborated and they wrote the movie script and all that stuff. But I think the biggest point that became well-known to the public, they had a... when they made the TV, they had a special showing for the Congress in Washington, D.C. Did she talk to you about that? They had a special screening for Congress, so after the Congress saw it, they never knew about, as much as, at that time, what happened really in camp, camp life and all that. And that's what started the ball rolling I think for reparations and all that stuff from that movie. And then when the movie was released to the public, it played on NBC, and it was the first time that NBC ran over the two-hour limit for showing it. I think it lasted two hours and fifteen minutes. So I think the television station knew the importance of this movie, and I think it really opened up the door for more discussion, maybe reparations would happen, and then Reagan was the one who pushed the reparation bill and Bush was the one who signed it.

AL: Was there anyone in your family who was not happy about having your family be portrayed to a national audience?

GW: As far as I know, no.

AL: Has it changed your life at all?

GW: Not really. Well... not really at all. In fact, I worked at, I was working at Lockheed, which was a major defense contractor at that time when it came out. And they made a story in their monthly newspaper that comes out for the company, they had a storyline on me and the book and the TV program. It made me well-known in the company itself.