Densho Digital Archive - June T. Watanabe Interview (denshovh-wjune-01-0017)

<Begin Segment 17>

KL: Have there been time -- you're ninety, have there been other times in your life when you've sensed a similar climate to 1942 and '42? Have you ever been worried that something similar could happen again?

JW: Well, you know what, remember when the Muslims started coming in and they started... they're fine, they have their own churches now, you know, this is what I think should be. If they want to build a moslim, is that what they call them?

KL: A mosque?

JW: A mosque and have their own religion, fine, as long as politically, as long as they don't form their own anti type of groups, I think that's fine. And we never did, I don't think the Japanese ever had any feelings of being anti towards United States. It's just not right, you know, to have a whole bunch of people like that, thousands of people. And I'm glad that you do have these museums, and I'm glad to hear about them, the McGehee, Arkansas, one too because that's the only way people, a lot of people will learn by attending things, if they can't find it in the books in school, people have that opportunity to visit. I really do think... and they should publicize it more maybe. Do the people in Arkansas know there is such a...

KL: I don't know. Arkansas has a pretty active State Office for Historic Preservation, and they put out a lot funding, kind of at county levels to help. There was a big one year anniversary, the museum's just about a year and a half old, so I don't know. Probably some people know and some people don't. Probably its reputation... I mean, a lot of people know about Manzanar through word of mouth.

JW: We learned a lot about it from... well, I don't know that everybody... the Rafu Shimpo, you've heard of the Rafu Shimpo? It's always Heart Mountain or Manzanar, you know. Very seldom do I hear of Jerome, Topaz, that center Topaz. There's Heart Mountain, Granada, Colorado. Poston we hear a lot about, too. We saw, at this seniors' last Wednesday's meeting a movie on Poston, how the state has developed that into a travel thing, an Indian... is it a reservation?

KL: It's a reservation.

JW: A reservation.

KL: It was even in the '40s.

JW: It was? And then they have the water system going.

KL: Yeah, it's interesting, the story I've always heard about Poston is that the tribe didn't want the confinement camp on the reservation, but the federal agency did.

JW: And they set it up.

KL: So it went in the camp. But there's a neat relationship I think, I had a visitor about a year ago at Manzanar tell me they had been to a reunion at Poston that summer, and there were tribal members with the Japanese American people throughout the whole, every part of the reunion, there was a dinner and there were tribal members, and families who either had been or had family members in Poston. And then there was a walking tour, the tribal members were there, and some of these descendants and stuff.

JW: Is that right?

KL: It sounds like kind of a neat relationship.

JW: That's nice, oh, that's nice. But they still have it there.

KL: Yeah, there's a memorial there and there's a group that's brought back one of the barracks. There's stuff going on in a lot of places, there's a museum in the works in Topaz.