<Begin Segment 15>

JA: How did you feel when there was some redress in the form of a check and an apology?

BS: Well, up to that point, up to the point I always felt like a second-class citizen, you know, having, being listed as 4-C "enemy alien" and being treated the way we were treated during the war, even in Salt Lake City. In Salt Lake City, while I was working and after dinner, my friend and I would be standing on the street corner and young kids would drive by and say, "Go home, Japs." And I'm thinking, "Oh boy, would I ever love to go home," but you couldn't. California was still closed at the time. That's the way they treated us.

JA: And then when there was some redress, did that change?

BS: So when I got the apology, something was lifted off my head, that I felt like a, hey, a decent citizen, and it was not until then that I felt like meeting my old high school friends, some grammar school friends. I never attended, you know, I felt that North Hollywood High School was my, was my school, even though I didn't graduate there, but I felt they were my, it was my school of choice. But I never tried to go to any of the class reunions that they might have had or any reunions that the school had sponsored, because it was difficult for me to meet my, meet and talk to my friends. I remember when I, we opened a dental office and the picture of the dental office was in the local newspaper, and one of my classmates wrote me a little note congratulating me. And I didn't have the courtesy to send him a note back because I felt so odd about it that I just couldn't face him, face the guy, that I just had a hard time. But then once we got the redress, I felt so much better that I participated in the North Hollywood High School reunion, I helped on the committee and my friends welcomed me, and in fact, the committee still meets every year and I see my old friends that I used to know back in the '30s and '40's.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2002 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.