Densho Digital Archive - Osamu Mori Interview (denshovh-mosamu-01-0021)

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RP: Did your camp experience or your camps experiences, as I should say, because you were at Santa Anita, Tule Lake and Jerome, did it have any impact on the rest of your life?

OM: Camp? I don't think so either way, negatively or positively. I don't think it added... other than because I'm what, thirteen or fourteen years old when I went into camp, it might have had a slight impact on my education, you know, graduating, getting out of high school, maybe a half a year or something like that. But other than that, I kind of grew up. I think if I were living on the farm, as if nothing happened, I don't know, I'd be some naive kid I think. I think camp... I matured a little bit more in camp. I met a lot of these city slickers and you know, grew up a little bit. I think that was helpful. Not because it was camp, but just meeting these people. I hope nobody has to go camp ever again but when you look at things positively, there's some good came out of it, I think. You know, like my mother, she says the greatest thing that she learned in camp was being able to sign her name. To her that's a big deal, and she would've never had that without camp. So you know, you just kind of, I guess look at the positive things if you want to move forward. If you're always looking at the negatives, you don't get any place I don't think.

RP: What were your thoughts about the redress that came up in the --

OM: Well, being a numbers person like I am, and I spent three and half, almost four years or whatever, in camp. And I read about some guy that was illegally put in prison for ten days and got, I don't know how many millions of dollars for illegal, you know, imprisonment. Just looking at the numbers, I think it's totally inadequate, the fact that it even happened, I think it's great. And that's what make maybe this country great is that some government came down and says you're sorry. So in that respect I think it's something great. But when you look at the numbers, I don't know, that's pittance, you know, for what they gave you. But, you know, what we're doing with that money is we're going to save it and give it to the kids anyway so it's not that you needed the money. To me it worked out, I don't know who thought about it, I think deep in our mind we're saying, I think the government did something bad. But to get redress in the form of, not compensation necessarily, but a letter saying that they made a mistake, that's something, I think. So that's my reaction to it, you know.