<Begin Segment 19>

RP: Mary, I was gonna ask you if you had ever been back to Manzanar since you left.

MS: Yeah. Chuck and I were, a few years ago, but they didn't have the visitor center going yet. And this Sue that is the librarian in Bishop, took us back there, and we were there. You know, the last April, the last Saturday in April every year, a bunch of 'em go up there. So Chuck's daughter, Sue, took us there a few years ago, two or three years ago. And they have, like... (...) it's five thousand come? They have quite a few come for this last Saturday in April, and they do it every year.

RP: The pilgrimage, right?

MS: Uh-huh.

RP: The pilgrimage, yeah. So you went up to one of these pilgrimages...

MS: One of 'em, yeah.

RP: And how, what was that like for you?

MS: Well, it's, there's nothing there like when we were there, at all. So it's just nice to see everybody, and I don't know many of them either. But I think it's a good thing to do. And they're doing it in some of the other centers, too, now. But it seems like Manzanar was close to L.A., you know. And there's probably more Japanese Americans in L.A. than a lot of places. So I think it's been a good thing. And of course, I feel like we all need to be working together and not separated. And not separated in Mexican or Spanish or... and the Spanish language, I was just reading today that McCain tried to do something in Spanish language and he got a bunch of things wrong. [Laughs] They said they were wrong. Anyway, you can tell I'm kind of way over on the left, but then, that's how it is.

RP: Yeah. If that's where you are, that's where you are.

MS: Yeah.

RP: So do you have any advice to impart to young people about social justice or activism in this era?

MS: Well, sure. I think that we need to be concerned about other people, and helping the poor. We ought to, our church isn't working with the poor very well, but we ought to be doing better. I mean, we need to help the income of people get closer together. I mean, I think it's terrible, these big executives getting millions and millions and millions, and then the people working for 'em, the proportion is awful and it's getting worse, and hasn't started to get better yet. But if we get a democratic president, it might change. I mean, Obama, he'll start working, but it can't happen quick, it'll take a long time. And the gap between the rich and the poor is, I think, is getting worse around the world. But I think we're worse here than Europe, probably. I think Europe is kind of a between, and they've always had some of the socialist things and some of the capitalist things in a better proportion than we do, and I wish we'd do it more like they do, but we don't. Americans are terrible about thinking they have to, you know, the gun business, thinking they have to have the guns. We need to get rid of a lot of those guns, and we need to have more, more regulation about who has them and how they, where they have them and stuff. I belong to, you know, Brady, wasn't he the one that got hurt once. I belong to (that). And I think it's... if we got rid of some of the guns, we couldn't have near as many people getting killed in L.A. And even this one member of our church was, happened to be gay, but I don't think anybody knew it. But he was walking to church one day and a bunch of guys came along in a car, and they rolled the window down, and they pointed a gun at him. They didn't shoot him, but he went in and called the police and told them. You know, it doesn't happen out here, but it sure happens in L.A., and they get killed every day. I read about it in the paper and it's terrible. And we need to do something about it, too, but we don't. And you know, I'm at the place that I can't do it anymore. So I'm watching the rest of 'em do it, or not do it. [Laughs]

RP: Or hoping they'll do it. Okay, well, thank you so much, Mary, for sharing your story.

MS: Well, I'm glad to talk to you. I hope this stuff makes sense.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.