<Begin Segment 15>

RP: Just one final question, Jim, how do you reflect on your experience in Manzanar and Topaz?

SS: Well, I think again, it's just another episode, well, more than that... see, Alameda is sort of foundational of my being who I am, and then Manzanar and Topaz is sort of the gateway into the world. And I think in my particular situation, it was the greatest thing that could have happened to me because I was able to take advantage. There's a saying in Japan, I think it's attributed to people of the merchants in the country, Osaka, "if you fall down, don't get up again without making a profit." Now profit from your (experience) and that's been the story of my life. Everything, my decision points... I've written a short biography for my grandkids and I initially captured a life that zigs and zags, but lately I call it each step of the way has given me another perspective on the world and existence, and also has led me into my Buddhist studies too. I'm now looking at it from the Buddhist perspective as that nothing is permanent, there's constant change. And circumstances or events, what I call, conditional phenomenon, that things happened because of certain conditions being so in certain events so forth. The conventional thinking of I'd say ninety-nine percent of people is linear, every time you see, what is the cause and there's no single cause, it's different things coming together.

And our society today, when something goes wrong, immediately, who's to blame? And the same way with the evacuation, you know, 9066 but if you read... I don't know if you had the opportunity to read the minutes of the emergency meeting of the Japanese American Citizens League in March of 1942, and the perception of the people that came from Washington, from the Department of Justice to explain what was being planned, and the reaction of the people attending it and then what actually resulted from what was intended and what happened incrementally. And the people think that, you know, it was a conspiracy to accomplish certain ends whereas it was intended for this purpose, well, along the way it changed. And I know the reality of this having been in government for twenty years, I had an instrumental role, I don't think you're familiar with it, but the Civil Service Reform Act in 1978 where we... I had a direct role in parts of that legislation. And I was also involved in... once it was passed through Congress, in editing before it went to final print, and that extent, from the planning to the writing of the legislation, to implementing it. And what was intended at the beginning and what came out of the legislation and then what happened in implementing the legislation, and it's totally different out here from what was originally intended. And one part of the legislation, the omission of one word turned one concept on its head. So, you know, and so, you know, you really... I'm, shall we say, unhappy about a lot of the post-evacuation rhetoric that's going on, how bad the government treated us, how bad the people. You know, what happened was the result of individual decisions by over a hundred thousand people, and those of us that were able to take advantage of the situation profited.

RP: Thank you very much, Jim, on behalf of Kirk and myself.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.