<Begin Segment 22>

AL: What would you say to, like there are so many schoolkids who read the book. It's required reading in some fourth grade classes, I think. Is there anything you'd like to say to people now or in the future just about your story and your life as you reflect back on it?

GW: I've made... the couple of times they've asked me to, well, this church school, I remember my nephew's wife was a teacher at this church, Sunday school, and she wanted me to talk about camp. Because this was, it's a Methodist church, but it's a Japanese Methodist church in San Jose. And I made a couple talks there and I told him my experience in camp. And my experience has always been a good experience because at my age when I was there, it was like summer camp. So I tried to talk to 'em at their age there now, that's how old I was, and how was it like to go to summer camp, and that's it. There was no way of telling them about this feeling that could occur later on, when you think about it, that didn't appear, this is what I tried to tell them that, that experience in camp, to me, myself, was not bad at all. It's for these people who were fifteen or sixteen, seventeen, college age or high school age that could be a problem because there was nothing for them to do after school. But for me it was fine. That's what I try to convey to the kids when I talk to them, that my experience, that was my experience, but I told 'em it was not everybody's experience, it could be different than mine. That's all I can tell 'em.

AL: You got to see Manzanar briefly in April, I know we were just sort of running around, and I hope you get to come back sometime with more time.

GW: I am going to come back, I'm going to try to make it next year because I want, Lisa's the one that lived in Seattle, and she's the one that found out all these books that she's been sending me about camp. And so she says her kids are now interested about camp, and she found this DVD that she played the DVD to them, so they're interested in it. So she wants to get her family. So I said sure, let's make a trip, we'll try to stay maybe Lone Pine or Independence, stay overnight, take a trip out to Manzanar.

AL: Yeah, let us know if we can help with anything. We just had a family come up a couple weeks ago, and we didn't know who they were, just a family reunion. We've had a number of family reunions come up. And one of our colleagues, Ranger Rose, was doing a tour, and it wasn't until the end that they said the name of the family members, it was a guy named Taira Fukushima, who passed away about a year and a half ago. And Rose knew him, and he's going to be in the interview in our barracks, and he's, they were amazed that we knew who he was. It was like, of course, we love Taira. So we always are happy, if there's anything we can do to facilitate connections or tours, or you can just, obviously, come up and do your own thing. But from what you saw or coming back, could you describe what your vision of an ideal Manzanar as far as a historic site or teaching place, what would you like to see Manzanar be or do?

GW: Well, what I've seen so far, and you're gonna be putting up examples of barracks, right?

AL: We hope the latrines, we have two barracks.

GW: Okay. Well, what you're showing is exactly what people need to see, because it will visualize for them, get the feeling of what life was like, you get that feeling. But trying to restore the ponds and the park, that's a good idea, too, because that was part of life. And as far as having to go back and put up more buildings, I don't think you need to do that, myself. What you've got there is beautiful, the auditorium set up is fantastic. We went to the Japanese museum in L.A., and to me, that has a lot of camp scenes, different camps. But to go to Manzanar, and you have that feeling and your visuals, what you're seeing, that mountain back there, you can't beat that. You do not have to put up a bunch of barracks, and your exhibit in that auditorium, it's good for the amount of time people will have to spend at Manzanar. Because people are just coming by, and they're going to go in there, and they're going to see, they're going to spend maybe one or two hours. And what you got in there is perfect for that. And especially when you get in there first and you see the video, that video that you have showing camp and all that stuff, that's good. The only thing I would say is maybe expand that a little bit, but that is really good. Because you get a general description of what it was like there, and then they go out and look around the auditorium, and then you take a trip around into the barracks and stuff, and then you feel that.

AL: Do you think there'd be any benefit to building, like, the latrines?

GW: One. Latrine and maybe the laundry, but the latrine will give them the sense of what's it's like to go in the latrine and have no privacy at all. We had the stool and all that, commodes, and no partitions between them, for the women it was horrible, and then open showers and all that. Yeah, especially the latrines, if you can make one. But you don't need to make it look dirty. [Laughs] I remember in the movie they made it look pretty dirty, and it wasn't really that bad.

AL: What did you think of the redress movement? I mean, you talked about how the film may have helped to encourage, get that on the radar, the congresspeople. But for you personally, when you got the apology and the check, what did that mean to you?

GW: To me it meant that it's over, the fighting is over of trying to get reparations. We got what we were fighting for, recognition that a wrong has been fixed. Whether... it could have been just a letter saying, you know, apology, it didn't need the money. Money meant nothing to us as far as I'm concerned, just a formal apology that they know that it was a bad thing to do and it shouldn't be done again.

AL: Were you involved in the redress movement at all?

GW: No. In fact, the funny thing is, I didn't get involved in the JACL or any of that stuff at home. I guess it goes back to like the beginning, we never talked about it. We want to hide it, we want to bury our heads and forget about it.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.