<Begin Segment 5>

AL: It's interesting, when you were visiting in April we talked a little bit about the movie Farewell to Manzanar versus your real life. Because in the movie, it shows her as dying in camp.

GW: No, she did not die in camp. Well, the movie shows versions of my brother, not all the brothers because I had (three) brothers. Well, there were four of us, six sisters, but then in the movie, how many girls were there? I think there was only two or three. So they had to make the, I guess, the story fit in the timeline, they made composites of sisters and brothers.

AL: How did your sisters and brothers feel about that?

GW: I don't know, we never talked about it. But I think to make the movie pliable or sellable to the TV people, they had to change stories, change the storyline. But it was basically made to show the plight of the Japanese going into a camp, and what happens in camp. That's basically, I think, the storyline that they wanted to show. Because John Korty, who was the director of that movie, just before that produced Jane Pittman's story, which was an Emmy-award movie and all that stuff. So he knows how to make a storyline palatable to the people, and at least to television.

AL: I think I told you when you visited, I first saw the movie when I was like nine or ten, and I read the book. So it's like in my mind, that was my first introduction. And we were talking about like the actor Yuki Shimoda and the woman Nobu McCarthy?

GW: McCarthy.

AL: Who played your mom. So if somebody has seen that movie and they think that's your family, could you just sort of characterize what about Yuki Shimoda's performance really was your father and how was it different, and the same thing with your mom.

GW: The, I think his name was... was his name Yamada was his last name, who played my dad?

AL: I think it was Yuki Shimoda.

GW: Okay, Yuki Shimoda, he's passed away since. But we thought that was, he did a great job portraying my dad in that movie. We look at it and we say, "That's Dad." He had the... the way he talked, the way he reacted, and we said, "Oh, that's Dad." He did a great job.

AL: What about the actress who plays your mother?

GW: Well, first of all, it didn't look like our mom, because my mom was about five-foot-one and kind of chubby. And in the movie, the woman, McCarthy, who played her, she's tall, thin, very graceful and thing, which is maybe just the opposite of my mom. So right there, the physical comparison wasn't there. We didn't see Mom in her.

AL: But did Yuki Shimoda look like your father?

GW: In a way, in a way. His actions and all that stuff was like Dad. But Dad, I consider Dad as tall and thinner than Yuki Shimoda. But it was just his actions and the way he played that we felt was remarkable.

AL: It was very impressive. You know, it was interesting, in the book Jeanne says that your father was very tall for Japanese, she says almost six feet. His record for Manzanar says he's five-foot-five. And I thought, I wonder how much of that height was his personality. Because his medical record says sixty-five inches.

GW: Yeah, he's not... he wasn't six feet. But to her, I think she felt like he was six feet because Jeanne at that time was small, and Dad is up like that, but he can act like, you know, a very powerful man and be tall. But this action is that he was thin, but he seemed tall to me. He felt like he was tall.

AL: Well, for that time he might...

GW: Have been tall.

AL: Yeah. Yeah, like I was telling you before, it's interesting because as somebody who's read the book and seen the movie, you feel like you know your family, but you don't. You just know this Hollywood portrayal, which is one of the reasons I most wanted to talk to you is just... one of my favorite series is this thing called "History and Hollywood" and then they show a film and then they show the real story, and it's fascinating.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.