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Yeah OK I think one of the reasons certainly
is that after the war life was very

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difficult for the Japanese American it
meant for example that most of us had

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nothing absolutely nothing and many of them
had young families of children who were

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just beginning to grow and so many people
held two or three jobs in order to make

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it in order to be able to make enough
money so that they can get enough of

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a down payment for a house and
to try to build up you know

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a very large family home and are also busy
getting their parents out from Cannes

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and taking care of the older people
who by that time were really had very

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had

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a real difficult time you know that you say
were about fifty at the time of the evacuation

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and by the time they left it was been fifty
four fifty five. Sorry hard for them to

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find jobs and so the nice

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a then had to take care of not only their
growing families but that you say their

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parents are not. And so as

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a result I mean there was little time
for anything because they were so busy

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working too as I said two or three
jobs. There was also the other factor

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of. Let me just explain at the
time that I left camp. I was going

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to go to school and all and I was given
very explicit directions at the time when

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D.D.

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When the first people to leave camp and I
was told at that time. Be sure that you

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don't congregate in groups of more than
three Be sure that you don't speak Japanese

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outside in other words don't call any
attention to yourself and that was made very

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clear to us when we were leaving so that
we remembered this very strongly and did

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not want to cause any problems because
we were afraid that all of the

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Japanese would be hurt if we did anything
that called attention to ourselves and

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therefore there was again every strong
feeling that you've only had to kind of like

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make it in the American society by working
hard and not not. Complaining and

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doing any of these things so that was part
of the problem I think that we had and I

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guess the first problem that
I could see is that. There's

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a whole thing that. I mean some people we
didn't feel that way but some people felt

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that it was it was

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a shame that it was you know that that
we were considered not quite American

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citizens by the way we were treated and
therefore it was something that was rather

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shameful that happened to us and there's

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a whole thing in Japanese culture that has
something to do with again leaving all

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of that behind and kind of shotgun I and
you know looking forward to all the time

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to do something and so we you know it's
kind of like pooled all of that together

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and were in a sense

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a quiet generation very busy trying to
make ends meet and trying to develop

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a life for our children that we didn't have
and as a result I think that there was

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a lot of quietness about it. We weren't.
Particularly affected that way because we

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worked in other organizations and we were
not quite as restrained about those kinds

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of thanks. So our children we told our
children about camp life we told I did speak

44
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to groups and told people about camp life
and all but not with the same kind of

45
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. Feelings that we have now about you know
as we look as we get alter we look back

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and see what happened.
I just part of it is

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a reflective thing as you know as and an
older person and seeing what was really

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wrong and trying to to seek
redress now you know I think just

49
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touched on it but I
think there's there was

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a history of discrimination against the
Japanese before the war and because of this

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I think there was the feeling that there
was no use fighting back because we're not

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going anyplace Anyway I think that's
partly the thing and of course the

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administration stressed that to us just
said and not congregating together in too

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big of

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a group and not showing the Japanese profile
so much. You know. And I think that's

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one of the reason then the other one I think
probably is because people didn't want

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to talk about her for various reasons
and she mentioned one of them that. Our

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cultural background you know prohibited
this because they thought it was

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a shame to talk about being in a camp.
And I think even today there are

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a lot of nice

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a who don't want to talk about it. To
their children either. And I think

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. It's probably difficult
for them to to talk about.

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The camp life and I know when I first
started to talk about we didn't talk about

64
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years in the open. We talked about among
ourselves but when I first went public and

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talked about it. I know that it's anger
came out of you know which I didn't realize

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the government motional And I think that's
probably the kind of feeling that most

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people would get when they start talking
about this and I think you saw that when

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they had the. Redress
hearings and you know

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a lot of the feelings people I just repressed
because at the time we couldn't deal

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with that came out and that was really
fascinating to see and I was glad that it

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that it did expressed itself that way. The
other thing was that we didn't have any

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models we had no models before of any
minority group that did anything to to right

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wrongs and I think it was the black civil
rights movement and this whole concept of

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you know really standing up and
ensuring equality of some kind of yes

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00:06:05,72 --> 00:06:07,59
a first time that we really saw

76
00:06:08,51 --> 00:06:13,37
a group doing something and that when I
saw Ernie and I had tremendous admiration

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for the black movement and then it was
wonderful to see it you know spread into

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other groups so I can remember Third
World strike at San Francisco State and

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feeling very positive of war about the
fact that there were Asian groups as well.

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Willing to to stand up and demand the
rights of citizenship and the rights of

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students all overs. I think it was part
of that too is that our American history

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never had or we were not aware of groups
of people are being able to stand up and

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make changes like yeah I think it's true
that the whole civil rights movement

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encourages us to in a way and
I know that. I speak out

85
00:07:01,21 --> 00:07:06,13
a lot more than I used to you know if I
feel that I'm being discriminated against

86
00:07:07,06 --> 00:07:12,61
and. I tell them off you go and you're
not afraid to do that anymore. Whereas

87
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before you sort of kept quiet and took it
and I think as she said this whole civil

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rights movement. I think encouraged

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00:07:20,100 --> 00:07:25,11
a lot of us to come out to these things
and that's why it's probably come out so

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00:07:25,11 --> 00:07:25,17
late.