Densho Digital Archive - George Nakata Interview (denshovh-ngeorge

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MH: You know, I know that Deena has written a book, The Gift. How did that come about? I think probably you had something to do with it, maybe?

GN: Deena was always interested in a very uncommon sort of way on history, culture, asked me about Japantown, Minidoka. She won the Senatorial Scholarship to Japan and went back to Japan, made two trips to Japan, stayed there for a number of months and loved Japan and its culture. And she learned about, she walked through rice fields and made ochawan's pottery and learned about clubs at Waseda University and traveled around Honshu and Shikoku, and she just respected and admired the people and all the things Japanese. And she then started to become more interested in her own roots and found that there was an absence of anything at least here in the Portland area, and subsequent to that, some other efforts have been initiated including this one of oral history. But at that time, there was almost a total lack, go to a library and you're not going to find much. Go to the Oregon Historical Society, hardly anything. The Nikkeijinkai, maybe a few pictures, that's about all, and Deena felt that maybe something could be done. And simultaneous to that, Harold 'Bones' Onishi approached me at church, Epworth Methodist Church, one day, and he said, "I've got an idea of maybe getting several of us together and thinking about a book. I think San Francisco and Los Angeles and Seattle all have kind of in their archives a book about the Nikkei community. We don't have anything." We sat down and talked about it. We got together and talked some more. Several others joined us, and there were challenges of funding it, of gathering photos, somebody writing it, somebody editing it, maybe copyright issues. But in my mind, nothing was insurmountable. That's all doable. It's going to take a little research. We're all resourceful in this room, we can do it. Who's going to write it? Somehow, the name of Deena was just thrown out there, and our three children all in terms of creative writing did very well. Darren, for example, I know has a tremendous vocabulary because he's talked about words that I don't even know what they mean. But nevertheless, Deena took on the task of writing the book. Originally, there was supposed to be two writers, but circumstances caused the other writer to leave our committee. And then there was a question of, "Deena, can you solo it, can you do it alone?" Well, young person with a job, and she said, "I'll do it. I'll need help, but I'll do it." And so our committee got together and met some more, and we went through quite a few stages learning about paging and graphic illustration, hard bound, soft bound costs, the legal steps of copyrighting, gathering photos from family albums, trying to tie it in with text, none of us professional at this. So we learned along the way and on the job training, and it's not a Nobel prize winner. It's not an award winning book, but it is the first thing of record that I know of that at least talks about the immigrants, the picture bride, the Nihonmachi, the executive order, all of the things for the last hundred years. And it was not easy for Deena and I. I recall distinctly her staying up at all hours wording and rewording things and checking the accuracy of this and going out with her little tape recorder and visiting many people from George Azumano to John Murakami to, gosh, so many people, Mr. Kinoshita out on Columbia Boulevard, Doctor Nakadate, so many, Iwasakis, and having this private library of her own and trying to prioritize and tie it into a story. She was very fond of Jiichan, my father, and she admits in the book I believe that Jiichan didn't speak fluent English. She didn't speak Japanese, but somehow they bonded, they communicated, and so she kind of dedicated her book to Jiichan and really to the Issei.

And so it came about the first book called The Gift several years ago, and Harold 'Bones' Onishi and I was, were kind of perplexed as to should we produce five hundred books. Do you think we can really get rid of five hundred? That's asking quite a bit, thousand, oh my golly. But we actually produced 1500 or 2000 books and hard copy and soft copy. And lo and behold, requests started to come in and I'd like five and I'd like ten and I'd like six. And not being a commercial company, we've got four orders from Alaska. We've got ten from Japan. How do we even ship and handle these? So we lived and learned, but we got orders. And in a few months, we were sold out. And even today in 2004, once in a while, Bones Onishi and I would say, "You know, we continue to get calls, and I think we could have sold another thousand." George, should, no, think about it, Bones. That was it. That project is over with. It's sayonara. We don't want to go back to that. We don't want to revisit. "Yes, but my wife Elsie is getting calls for more books." It was, sure we do that in good humor, but Deena was really one of the main strengths behind that whole effort as well as Bones and dedicated committee members, so Scott Sakamoto, [inaudible] artist, and it came out okay. As I mentioned, it's not the glossy thing. It was done on a shoestring budget. We tried to sell it at an affordable price. And so I think it was a contribution to the Nikkei legacy of Portland in its own small way.