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KL: I know you also had an important experience at the Life Interrupted Reunion.

SM: With what?

KL: I know you also had an important experience at the Life Interrupted Reunion.

SM: Oh, yeah.

KL: Would you talk a little bit about what that was like?

SM: Okay. We had been to Rohwer and Jerome on a visit years before, but that conference, there were about sixteen hundred people and the majority of them didn't seem to come from Jerome or Rohwer. They were from other camps who were living east of Arkansas, like Chicago and New York, and I asked 'em, "How come you're here? You weren't in Jerome or Rohwer." They said, "Well, it's too hard for us to visit Los Angeles and San Francisco, so we met our friends here in Arkansas." And I thought, gee, that's wonderful they came to a place where they could see all their friends and that's why they were there. But because many of them, from outside of the West Coast, don't have the kind of support we have on the West Coast to talk about these things, they really enjoyed things. And let's see, but the workshops were all good. We were able to visit the high school in Little Rock where the, where the nine blacks attended. We talked to the, one of the students who were one of the nine. And I heard Jeannie Wakatsuki Houston in our workshop, when we asked her, "Why did you write the book?" And her, what she said I've shared with many people, especially with regards to people who say, "Oh, you know, majority of you were children, so the camp didn't really bother you. You had a lot of fun, like the elderly had free time and didn't have to work. So you kids, when you talk about injustice and all that, you're just mimicking what others have told you. But you guys had a lot of fun, so it didn't really bother you." Well, what I share with them is the metaphor of incest. Here's a little child, abused by a parent, a little child; you don't tell that child, "You know, you were so little, it didn't bother you." Well, we loved our government. We were fiercely loyal to the Americans and we were so devoted to America, and then this happened and we were violated, and so we just have to, like incest children, earlier days, we just had to bury it. We felt the shame and the humiliation of it, but nobody would advocate for us. We had nobody to defend us, so we just had to bury it and just move on, try to prove that we're as good as any other Americans and things like that. And sometimes it's buried so deep that we can't get in touch with those feelings anymore, and so these children, and I use Jeannie's answer, she said, "Well, one day my nephew came up from UC Berkeley and he said, 'Aunt Jeannie, tell me about Manzanar. I was born there.'" And she said, "Well, ask your parents. Obviously they were there." He said, "Every time I ask them they don't want, they don't seem to want to talk about it. Aunt Jeannie, you tell me" And she said, "Well, I was only seven, eight, nine years old. And we'd been to, we made a lot of friends and went to basketball games at the high school, and football games, and then there was dances." And her nephew said, "Aunt Jeannie, that's, so are you in prison? You're talking about watching games and go to dances, how did you feel?" And she said, she said that nobody had ever asked her how she felt, and she said, "When I tried to tell my nephew, I just cried and cried. I couldn't tell him. And so I told my husband, Jim, I've got to write about Manzanar to teach a young, younger generation what it was all about." And so she said, "I sat down to type, and every time I started to type I just broke down and cried, and I couldn't write." She said, "I tried over and over and over. I couldn't do, I just couldn't type. And so I told my husband Jim, I can't do it. And he said, 'You have to do it. I'll help you.'" And so she said together they wrote the book, Farewell to Manzanar. And I said, Jeannie was only seven, eight, nine years old, and you can't tell incest children, "Oh, you were too young, so you didn't, it didn't bother you." I think it affected all of us, whether we, no matter what age we were, because, unless we were babies. But babies are aware of all the parents are feeling, and siblings.

But we just, we were so proud of being Americans, and then all of a sudden we're connected to Japan, we're not trustworthy, we're a risk to our national security. But our culture helped us survive through it, but didn't help us to confront or deal with it, with our feelings. We just had to bury it. I remember in a church in Ogden, I was telling the older Niseis, "You need to talk about it," because every so often someone would finally break down and he'd cuss the church up and down because the church didn't do anything for, when this happened, in Seattle where he used to be, on the West Coast. And I know another church member in Stockton, he used to bring his mother, Issei mother, every Sunday, but he never stayed, he played golf. And one day he brought, came after his mother, and so we sat down while he was waiting and we started to talk about how unjust it was, and then, boy, he just broke down and four-letter words, and he said the blankin' blank blank blank country and the church didn't do anything. And so I was telling these Niseis that they needed to talk about. Said, "Oh, that doesn't bother me. It happened a long time ago. Not only have we, we had fun playing with sports." And they would just, they would laugh it off. But during the commission hearing, I heard that these same ones started to testify, they choked up, and of course we had a hard time getting them to even testify, but when they did they choked up and the other Nisei friends say, "My gosh, we've never seen him shed tears like that. What's going on?" Well, I don't know, other than the government gave them permission to get it out, talk about it. And when they did they had a hard time dealing with it, with their emotions I mean. But anyway, unfortunately, most of the Niseis have gone to their grave still in their gut, but I used to tell these Niseis, "You need to talk about it because it's festering in your gut and it's, I'm sure it's getting in the way." And they would say, "It doesn't bother me," and they just pooh-poohed it as if it didn't really bother.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2014 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.