<Begin Segment 24>

AL: Did your family have any interactions with the Protestant church, or was your dad just busy fighting with the nuns?

GW: No. As far as I know, there was... we really wasn't a churchgoing family per se, like everybody, I didn't go to church on Sunday. I still don't go to church every Sunday, just once in a while. And my daughters don't. So as far as religion goes, it's not something that's a serious topic or anything in our family. Nobody's overzealous with Christianity or Buddhism. We follow a lot of the Buddhism things that you're supposed to do if you're Buddhist, like a person dies, you cremate 'em and then you wait one year, you can't travel and stuff like that. And some families do that, and you put their ashes in the Buddhist church and you have to go visit every seven years, and every seven years you'll have some kind of ceremony for 'em. Myself, I don't follow that.

AL: Are your folks buried over in San Jose?

GW: My father and mother are in the same gravesite, May is in another gravesite, three are located in San Jose. That's something I've been thinking about because I'm getting kind of old, I said, "What am I going to do? What shall I do?"

AL: Go to Vegas.

GW: I figure I'm the believer of something simple. You don't need to bury me, just get me cremated, take my ashes and throw me in front of Santa Cruz over there where I go fishing and throw me out in the ocean.

AL: That's where you live now, Santa Cruz?

GW: No, I live in San Jose.

AL: San Jose.

GW: But that's where Jeanne lives, in Santa Cruz. It's only thirty minutes away from our house in San Jose. I go fishing all the time.

AL: So are you and Jeanne still close?

GW: Not really. That's the funny thing about it, I very rarely see her. I haven't seen her in maybe two or three years now. I haven't even talked to her. I try to talk to her and I can't get her on the phone. Send her emails, she doesn't answer me on email. Won't answer Charlotte, Charlotte tries to get a hold of her. But the funny thing is, we live so close together, my sister Eleanor lives close by, I very rarely see her.

AL: So you should tell Jeanne, "Hey, don't you know me? I'm in a famous book. Call me back."

GW: Oh, I'm going to tell her, "Hey, I'm going to have a video out, you'd better watch out."

AL: That's right.

GW: I'm going to tell the whole story about the book.

AL: That's right, the next book I'll put your video in. "Oh, I talked to this guy Kiyo." Bernadette, did you have any questions?

BJ: I actually do, and I'll try to be short about it. But early on in your conversation, you mentioned when your mother and you were on the bus after leaving camp, and that you think that was the first time you felt the pain of discrimination. And you also had mentioned earlier that you and Jeanne would have done anything for your mother because she would have done that for you, yet you said you couldn't do anything about it. How did that make you feel?

GW: Well, you got to remember how old I was. With my mother, this experience I had with my mother, I was junior high school, and we were walking down the street in downtown Long Beach, and some lady, we walked past her, stopped in front of Mom and spit on her and said, "Jap, go home." And here I am, I'm just a kid. I respect elders that much that I ain't gonna try to hit her, that old lady who spit on my mom. And all we can do is walk away. And that's what hurt so much, is that there was so much I want to do but I can't do. And even riding on buses, I used to stand waiting for a bus, and some guy called me, come by me and says, "You can't get on that bus, you're a Jap. Go home. Don't get on that bus." So I stand there, I don't get on that bus. There's nothing I can do. That was the most painful part of being a Japanese American is being discriminated like that where you can't do nothing about it.

And I remember walking with Woody, we were walking down Long Beach and we went to a movie and we were coming back, and Woody was in uniform. And some guy bumped him, and Woody turned around, he was going to hit him and says, "Look, I'm an American, I've got this uniform on. I'm working on saving your country." And the guy didn't say anything, but you know that he was trying to pick a fight or something like that. It's things like that happened that sort of make me, I think gave me that inferiority complex that stayed with me for a long time. But I was able to work that through because when I went to high school I was, I played football, I was a football captain, I made, I got a scholarship when I got out of high school, so I did things that helped me recover to show that I don't need to be inferior, that I'm not inferior, I'm just as good as the other guy. But I think that's where deep down, at that age, you feel this power of inferiority complex because of my race, of who I am, and it's hard. It's hard. But it's different now. I feel I'm just as good as the other guy.

AL: What did you think after September 11th when you saw what was happening?

GW: Right away, first thing hit my mind, there's going to be talk about putting all the Arabs in internment camps. There was some talk about it, wasn't there? Rounding up the Muslims and putting them in camp. That's what I first thought. But it's a good thing it never happened, and it shouldn't happen. That's enough talking. [Laughs]

AL: Well, Kiyo, on behalf of all of us and the National Park Service, we are beyond grateful. I can't even tell you how honored we are to talk to you, and have a chance to help preserve your recollections. And for me, personally, it's really interesting because that book changed my life as a kid. It got me interested in something I never knew anything about, and it stayed with me for a long time. It's why I'm at Manzanar. So it means even more to me to have a chance to talk with you and meet you, and love spending time with you. Like I said, on behalf of all of us and on behalf of anyone who hears this in years to come, thank you for your time, for sharing your heart, your memories, and for bringing your family to life.

GW: Thank you, it's been a pleasure.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.