<Begin Segment 19>

AL: So this trip in April, was that your first trip back to Manzanar?

GW: Yeah.

AL: What was that like?

GW: It was mind-boggling. You know, it was very, very... I don't know what you might call it, but it impressed me so much that I had to stand there and take it all in, because it was mind-boggling that here I am, standing sixty-seven years later, in a place where I was a kid running around, no fence around it anymore, but it's someplace that I lived and endured my childhood there for a while. It was quite an experience. And I want to thank you for taking us through there, because it really brought back memories.

AL: Well, it was an honor, is an honor to meet you.

GW: Thank you.

AL: Your parents were both gone by the time the book and the movie came out.

GW: Yes.

AL: What do you think they would have thought about it?

GW: Well, I think my father would have been in an uproar. [Laughs] Because showing that scene of him getting drunk and hitting Mom and getting socked in the face. But other than that, I think he would, they would be proud of that. They would be more proud of the book really than of the movie.

AL: Jeanne says in the book that she was the first of her generation to go to college, she was the first of her generation to marry a Caucasian. So did she marry before May married?

GW: Yes.

AL: And what was your parents' reaction?

GW: Well, as far as I know, that they didn't approve of the marriage. That's why Jeanne and Jim had to go to Hawaii to get married. They got married on the beach, beach ceremony in Hawaii. Because Jim very rarely came over to the farm, because of Dad, I think. Dad would probably shoo him away.

AL: Did they ever reconcile with him?

GW: I don't know. I don't know if they did. Because Jeanne wasn't around when Dad died, as far as I remember. I don't think Jeanne was in town. Because when Dad died (when I was) working in the post office, and I got a call, and I had to take Dad into the hospital. He passed away that same day. So I don't remember seeing Jeanne at all.

AL: Yeah, he's certainly larger than life in the book. When Jeanne and her husband were writing the book, do you have any idea, sort of, how they divided the labor? Like she pulled the memories together and he wrote them, or they co-wrote, do you have any idea --

GW: No.

AL: -- how they created it?

GW: No. As far as I know is that Jim was maybe more of the prose writer, you know, the prose in it, how the words were spoken and all that. And Jeanne is... she can write, in fact, she was a journalism major when she was going through college. So Jeanne has written some books of her own already, which are presentable, I mean, good that she's able to write. She does well. But Jim is the one that, I guess, put things together, because he taught that in college really, he had some classes in writing.

AL: I've read her book Fire Horse Woman, and I actually am a Fire Horse. [Laughs] I think... that's interesting.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.