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KL: That's a great segue, too, because the thing I kind of wanted to end on is your going to school, you write, "We go to schools, universities, college clubs telling our stories. This has become our mission."

MM: Yeah.

KL: Why is that so important to you?

MM: Because we're not going to live too much longer. We're in our eighties, you never know. And so it's important to tell our stories because there's so few of us doing it. We ask our peers, "Please go and tell your stories. Everybody has a story, don't think it's not important. Every story is important." But they don't want to do it. They don't want to talk about it because if they do they'll cry or they'll, they'll... and you know, when we started out telling our stories, Saburo used to cry. The tears would just come out. But see, I already got my tears out, when I was with the women in preparation, so I got all that out, so I can tell my story without crying. But Saburo still had the pain, and he did break down sometimes when we first started. But he doesn't anymore because now he's let it out. He's, once in a while he might choke, but he's able to go on, and I really admire that. I really admire that in him. It makes me want to do it more. I mean, the importance of doing it is more important, to me, and so that's how important, we give our life to it. And we pay our own way. We got to all these schools, they don't compensate us. They don't pay us for our gas, or when we went to Nebraska we paid our own way because when the lady said Nebraska is ninety-five percent, I said, "They don't know us. They don't know anything about Japanese people." I said, "We got to go there." That's what I said. And we went, and we spoke to sixteen hundred students and people, as a result.

KL: What have been some memorable responses?

MM: Well, the Nebraska one, the fifth grade class, they were wonderful. They're so innocent, they ask anything and everything. And so I don't remember the questions that they asked, but they were the students that asked the most questions. When we went to the high school, there was maybe here and there, but not like these fifth graders, and they came up to hug us afterwards. It was wonderful, just wonderful.

KL: Just real quickly, what are some of the other states that you've traveled to, or universities?

MM: We went to Minnesota, we went to Michigan, West Virginia, those are the states we went to. And they're all over there. When we went to Minnesota we spoke to a lot of people. We even went on TV. Gina Wenger did a wonderful job. She really worked hard -- and they had posters of us, big posters with pictures of us and we saw our picture, I said, "Oh my God, how big." [Laughs] I brought a couple of 'em home, I mean they sent it to us, and I gave one to my daughter Michal, said, "Mom, I love this picture of you. It's one of the best pictures you've taken." I said, "Really?" So she has it posted in her kitchen cabinet where everybody can see it. But, see, Minnesota paid our way, Michigan we went on our own accord, and West Virginia, they paid. So two didn't pay and two we paid. But we're going to Glenville next year, and then there's a possibility of New York. This student that interviewed us via email, he said he won second place with our story.

KL: Was it for History Day or something?

MM: Yeah, History Day.

KL: Congratulations for your part in it.

MM: So because of that, he said, I said, "Well, we'd be glad to come to your school and speak." "Really?" And so he put the bug in the school's ear and says, "Well, we'll look into that then." So they're, of course, they got to find money.

KL: That's really exciting.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.