[00:05:48] Host: And you said that this was coming from people inside of the camp. And to your understanding, is it that there was a fear of speaking out and this concept of like, let's just, you know, follow the rules, and maybe this will all be over?

[00:06:07] Nimura: And- Yeah, I mean, there were a bunch of reactions, right, to that questionnaire and to the military coming in to draft these young Nisei men. You know, some people were just like, yes, please, let's just, you know, let's just keep our heads down and let this all be over. Some people were really conflicted, right, but wanted to keep families together. Others really believed that, you know, volunteering for the military was their best chance to prove loyalty. And there were those like my grandfather, like my uncle, Hiroshi Kashiwagi, who said, wait a second, we are American citizens, our constitutional rights are being taken away here. This is not something that we agree with and that we were taught, right, was wrong. So, as far as who might have informed people from within camp, there could have been a number of people, right?

I don't have documentation as to who, but I do have a copy of a, I think it was a sociologist report, Japanese American sociologist reporting from within who was very clearly not on my grandfather's side who said, yeah, you know, this guy is making all these speeches and doing all these things. But I try to keep in mind that everybody was in a really terrible environment, a really terrible state.

[00:07:36] Host: Sure. And scared, I'm sure.

[00:07:38] Nimura: Oh, yeah. I mean, it was a terrifying place and a terrifying time. So, not to necessarily excuse, but to explain, right, why someone might have reported my grandfather. But it certainly caused a great deal of distress and trauma for my dad and my grandmother and his siblings.

[00:08:00] Host: You lost your father early on at 10 years old. Was he able to share any of his experiences before he passed? I know you mentioned his manuscript and we'll talk a little bit about that later, but was he ever, was it something that was kind of like stories that he would tell his children?

[00:08:26] Nimura: Yeah, I mean, you know, since I was 10 and now in my 50s, it's not something that I remember very clearly him talking about with me. I do remember sort of, you know, family sort of gatherings and just sort of camp being maybe briefly discussed or mentioned. Before my dad passed away, though, he and I were able to meet the Japanese American author Yoshiko Uchida, who had written by then a few books about her experience. And we got to meet her on the occasion of her publishing her book Journey Home, which was about life after camp. And so, my dad and I were able to meet her through a special school program. So, you know, we had that understanding, right? I knew that, but it wasn't something where he sat there, you know, sat around the, you know, the dinner table or, you know, driving around or something and said, you know, when I was in camp, you know, like that. It wasn't something that he spoke of freely, but I know that it's something that's a story that he wanted to share eventually. So, yeah, we'll talk about that when we get to talking about his book a bit more.

[00:09:31] Host: Yeah, I was always curious, you know, from a family who has gone through that kind of level of trauma, and then being that next generation after it, like, at what moment, if you can remember, did the weight, that emotional weight of what your family had gone through, kind of present itself to you? More than just the story of, oh yeah, my family, yeah, they had this experience. And then that realization of, oh my gosh, you had to go through that, and kind of really feeling that and knowing that it wasn't just one, that it was this, it was that whole side of your family.

[00:10:17] Nimura: Yeah, I mean, certainly, I would call it a sort of composting of moments, right? That, you know, there were sort of the moments that I knew about, that I can remember when I was, you know, young and knew this had happened, knew that my family had gone through that. As I grew up and began to learn more about what that history was, and especially sought it in college, really learned more about it then, and then met other descendants, other folks, as well, you know, besides my cousins. That was maybe another kind of layer of feeling. And there have been a ton of moments as I've gone back through his manuscript about his incarceration, and then visiting the actual site where they were. All of those things, I think, sort of, you know, have been this accumulation of moments. Certainly, when it all kind of came to a head was when I went to visit the actual site.

[00:11:16] Host: At Tule Lake, yeah.

[00:11:17] Nimura: Right, that's right.

[00:11:18] Host: When do you feel you were called to represent that emotional weight of that experience of your family's experience and of the experience of the other 120,000 Japanese Americans in your creative work?

[00:11:34] Nimura: Oh, wow. I think, again, it was, I would call it another sort of series of things, right? You know, we kind of like to think that there might be just one moment when we, when I knew, right? But I think that it's really been a story that sort of grabbed hold of me really early, took root in me very early, and really has never quite let me go. You know, in high school, for example, right? We were, I was, you know, in a US history class, like a big survey class. And I think there was just maybe a paragraph in the sort of long history textbook about the incarceration. And I knew that that was just such an inadequate way to talk about that history. And, you know, for a lot of folks, that's still all they know, right? And all that they remember. So, I think then I, you know, I felt then compelled, right, to go and like, you know, talk to my oldest auntie who was still alive and interview her about her experience. And then as a senior in college, I was, you know, I think, compelled by the silences in my college experience in my curriculum. Certainly, almost nobody had assigned a Japanese American author in, you know, in my classes, English major classes, that is.

When I took my first Asian American Studies class, I think that was another sort of awakening when I walked into, you know, a room full of like 200 other Asian Americans, Asian American professor, Asian American teaching assistants, Asian American books, Asian American stories, all of the, you know, the front and center. Having that experience was certainly another kind of spark, right? I just had never had that in my, you know, in my time. And as I was writing, you know, my senior thesis in college, basically I sought out these Japanese American women writers who were third generation, whose families had been through camp, dealing with that kind of work. And so, I did my first, we'll say, scholarly work about Japanese American literature then. But I felt very clearly that I was addressing the silence in the curriculum, right? And in the major. And I remember very clearly going to visit my senior advisor for my thesis and telling him, okay, I'm writing about this, you know, these women and this thesis and this experience, and I have to include some history. And shockingly, no one had taught me how to do that in an English paper before, and nobody had taught me that historical context really could be part of, if not integral to, a literary context. And I remember so clearly that he told me, yeah, you're right, you have to include some history. But just remember, not everybody will let you do that in this department. And I was like, this is Berkeley, right? I was at Berkeley. Like, I was supposed to be this, you know, home of the People's Park and the Revolution and Telegraph Avenue, and I was shocked at what would have felt like a very conservative move, right? To be like, you know, just focus on the text. You can't include, you know, all of this history and these, you know, politics or whatever in addition. So, you know, that was maybe my first kind of scholarly attempt, right, at, you know, going for the silence. In graduate school, I studied Asian American literature and African American literature, but, and I did a little bit of creative writing off and on in college and in graduate school. But it really wasn't until I left my life teaching in the Academy until, let's see, that would have been 2010 or so when I really decided that I wanted to go for it and become a creative writer as well.

[00:15:26] Host: I'd love for you to talk about the exhibit, the Tanforan exhibit at the San Bruno BART station and how that opportunity came about. I mean, kind of give us a little understanding of what that exhibit is, but also how you got brought into it.

[00:15:42] Nimura: Sure. Let me see. Let me think about how far back, and I can't give you exact dates. This is why I'm a terrible historian. So, I came to know the artist Naomi Shintani, and I believe it was through just sort of mutual friends in the Japanese American community. Naomi and I worked together on a catalog essay for her exhibit about immigrant and refugee children, and she had asked me to write an essay just for the exhibit catalog. And you know, since my sister's a visual artist, I was really excited to work with her on that. And I guess she really came to like my writing, and then I had been doing a bunch of writing for Discover Nikkei in the Japanese American National Museum there in Los Angeles. I'd been doing other kinds of writing around Japanese American history and experience, and she'd read that, and she basically contacted me and said, we're doing this exhibit inside the BART station at Tanforan at San Bruno, and would you like to be the exhibit writer? And I was like, absolutely. I mean, how do you say no to that? So, really, we had a really fantastic team to work with. We had a great graphic designer, we had great support from within BART as well, and of course, other members of the Japanese American community, the folks who are basically in charge of the Tanforan Memorial that's outside the BART station. So, there is a memorial outside that has sculptures, poetry, names outside the station, but inside the station, there is, I believe it's about 25 to 30 feet long wall exhibit basically detailing partly the sort of overall camp experience and then focusing in on people's experience at Tanforan itself, what was it like living there, the art school that developed there, the incredible artists that came out of that site, and then kind of taking people through like their journey through Topaz, what life was like for redress and reparations, all the way up through sort of contemporary activism and how Japanese Americans are still trying to speak out against conditions of incarceration.

[00:18:11] Host: And it's still there, so if I take the BART in San Bruno...

[00:18:16] Nimura: That's right, yeah, yeah, yeah. And even, we've been told, like, if you just want to go see the exhibit, you could even ask people at the station to just let you in and see that. But yeah, without even having to buy a ticket.

[00:18:28] Host: Now I had the opportunity and the pleasure to connect with Frank Abe for another podcast series to discuss the book you co-wrote with him, We Hereby Refuse. How did that collaboration come about?

[00:18:43] Nimura: Well, the short answer is that we were hired. We basically both answered a call put out by the Wing Luke Asian Museum in Seattle. They wanted graphic writers for a graphic novel and artists, and there's a community advisory committee that basically looked at applications and then hired both me and Frank, and then the two artists, Roshi Ishikawa and Matt Sasaki.

[00:19:07] Host: And what was that experience like? Because in that book, you were able to tell part of your family's story.

[00:19:14] Nimura: Yeah, it was, wow. I mean, I feel like there are so many stories about that whole process because it took us four years to write it. Lockdown happened in the middle of that and what else? And we were hired in February 2017, so just after really the November 2016 presidential election. So, writing it really was in some ways a really productive thing to be doing, you know? It really felt like, wow, we are in this climate of resistance and we are hopefully, you know, contributing to how people think about resistance and hopefully will think about it in the future. Lots of things to, like, misconceptions, misunderstandings to clear up about resistance for Japanese Americans. In some circles, it was a very stigmatized thing, resistance, and in others, it was valorized. So, really, I had so much to learn. I learned so much and I learned really that there's a lot more that I think we don't know. So, it was a real honor to have a part in that. And then, yeah, to work on my uncle's story before he passed away. He wasn't able to see the full book, unfortunately.

[00:20:36] Host: Right, because it was two years after you started that he passed.

[00:20:39] Nimura: That's right. Yeah, 2019. So, I was sad he didn't get to see it, but he did get to see parts of it and parts of his story. We were able to talk to him about, you know, just sort of as much as he could remember about, you know, life in camp and his decisions. And fortunately, you know, he had such a body of work that we were able to draw from as well.

[00:21:00] Host: Now, your father, we mentioned that he wrote a manuscript. So, he was a writer and his manuscript was essentially a memoir about his experience in the prison camp and after the war. But I'd love for you to tell us about Daruma, the Indomitable Spirit.

[00:21:20] Nimura: Sure. Oh, thank you. So, yes, Daruma is named for a sort of Buddhist figure. You might see, people might be familiar with the statue in different places, Japanese restaurants or stores or whatever. But it's a little red figure that's sitting, there's a face on it. If you try to tip it by tapping the top, it has a rounded bottom, so it cannot be toppled easily. And so, my dad took that figure and called his book Daruma, the Indomitable Spirit. So, as far as I know, he was writing this book in the 1960s or so, so a good, what, 20 years maybe after his incarceration, and was trying to get it published. And he wrote it for some time. I have, you know, I have at least one rejection letter that from a press in the name of another press that he might have tried, but as far as I know, he was never able to really get it published. He, my mother says that people rejected it for not being angry enough, which is interesting. And it really, but it's really full of amazing amounts of detail. I, you know, I can't believe even, I'll just keep returning to it going, I can't believe he remembers so much of this. You know, he remembered what they bought at the grocery store when he was growing up, these Japanese goods that he had. There's also a chapter on how my grandfather organized a whole community gathering, block gathering to make mochi, which is this pounded rice cake. But they had to, you know, buy and make all of that equipment, so they had to, like, find the right place for the rice, they had to get the right wood for the mallets and carve the mallets, and then they had to steam the rice, and they had no, you know, electric rice cookers, so they had to, like, create these wooden boxes and then build a fire and boil the water and, you know, steam it through these wooden boxes. So, just amazing amounts of detail that he was able to remember.

[00:23:35] Host: Do you remember the first time you read that?

[00:23:38] Nimura: Sort of. So, it would have been maybe eight or-

[00:23:41] Host: So, it was before he passed.

[00:23:43] Nimura: It was before he passed, yeah. Yeah, I do remember him giving me a copy to read. I do remember it wasn't the first time I knew about camp, but here's what happened for me after he died when I was 10. I really took a lot of things associated with my dad, a lot of memories associated with my dad, and kind of locked them up in a little box in my head, and I really didn't know how to work with them or process them, except through writing eventually. You know, little things about my dad started to sort of creep out, and the very first published piece that I wrote in high school was also about my dad. So, we had, I remember him saying, you know, what do you think? But I don't know if I even said anything besides, you know, I liked it, or I wasn't, you know, I didn’t have the language really to say like, you know, “well, in Chapter 5...” right? So, I think that maybe might have been his way of starting a conversation with me, but I feel like I was still pretty young to have that with him. And he really, he did treat me and my sister as if we were little adults at times. He really spoke to us, you know, he took us seriously, right? It wasn't necessarily like an over maturation, but you know, he showed us things, you know, like, you know, slasher movies that were like samurai movies, and we watched soap operas together in Japanese, so he could, you know, brush up on his Japanese before he went to Japan. Lots of things that I really, you know, you take a lot of things for granted when you're a kid, right? Like, doesn't everybody's dad teach them how to teach, you know, how to write a check? Or, you know, use a typewriter, or doesn't everybody's dad take them to the opera? So, lots of things that I made it, you know, I just didn't know might have been unusual. But, you know, I appreciated that he really, as a parent now, I really appreciate that he treated us as if we were, you know, beings within our own thoughts and feelings to be taken seriously.

[00:25:48] Host: And I'd love for you to talk a little bit about A Place for What We Lose, but Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake, and how your dad's manuscript kind of finds a home within your work.

[00:26:04] Nimura: Thank you. Yeah, I'm sorry, I get a little overwhelmed talking about it because it's a book that is in production right now.

[00:26:14] Host: Right. We're releasing next year, correct?

[00:26:17] Nimura: We're releasing next year.

[00:26:18] Host: That's exciting. Congratulations.

[00:26:20] Nimura: Thank you. Thank you. And it's really been like a 15-year journey to write it. So, let me just sum it up first. It's called A Place for What We Lose, Daughter’s Return to Tule Lake, and it is the story of how I learned to finally grieve my dad by rereading his unpublished memoir and then going on community pilgrimage to the place where he and his family were incarcerated. So, that's the sort of short version, but it includes lots of pieces of my dad's book as well. It doesn't include the whole book, but it includes pieces of his book and it responds to his book in ways. It's not the sort of usual reprint that you might expect, say, from a scholar, right, who would do a sort of, you know, a foreword or an afterword and leaving the middle intact, right? I wanted it to be experimental enough that people would remember it because there are a lot of books about the incarceration. I also wanted it to be intergenerational, like a truly dialogic text between, you know, these two voices, between my voice and between my dad's voice. So, there are places where, you know, I kind of annotate things for him or for readers, rather, and there are places where I respond quite directly to something that he says in his book. And there are places where I even take issue with what he says or disagree. And there are places where I kind of round things out, like, you know, he mentioned this. Wait a second. Let me go search other archives to find out what else people might have said about this particular incident in camp. And because I have a much deeper understanding of Tule Lake history now, especially after We Hereby Refuse, I feel like I was better equipped to take my dad's book in hand and go, okay, this is where his story, where my family's story fits into the larger Tule Lake story, where it fits into the larger incarceration story.

[00:28:30] Host: Yeah, there's something tragically fascinating about the fact that your dad was 10 years old when he had that traumatic being taken from his home and put into a prison, and you were the exact same age when you had the traumatic loss of your father. So, there's something that will always be able to put you back at that age you were, which was the same exact age he was when he had that experience.

[00:29:00] Nimura: Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's very true. And, you know, here's, thank you for noticing that. I'm also really moved and overwhelmed by the fact that he was 52 when he passed away, and I will be 52 when this book comes out. For both of our voices together. Yeah, I mean, there's something, you know, in whatever, you know, larger universal or higher powers you might believe in, there's something that says this is probably when the book was, you know, wanted to be born.

[00:29:34] Host: Now, I want to finish. You used throughout your work, you know, throughout everything that I've read in your work relating to what happened following Executive Order 9066, you used the word “incarceration,” and you've used it throughout this conversation as well. Do you remember when that word for you became the word that needed to be used to describe what happened to the 120,000 Japanese Americans?

[00:30:02] Nimura: Yeah, yeah. And from what I know, it's closer to 125,000. I want to say it was around 2010 or so, maybe a little bit later. I might have been writing and using it, using internment before, but I started to know different historians, different places, started reading different documents, started to get to know people in the Tule Lake Committee, for example, who were using incarceration and who very clearly made that distinction between internment and incarceration. And by then, I'd been reading so much stuff about and studying so much about the incarceration that internment was still very familiar to me, but it had almost become soft, like something that people were like, oh, yes, the Japanese American internment, right? And it's kind of easy, I think, for people to kind of fold it into its own exceptional thing, right? Technically, right, it refers to the Issei, right? The folks who were Japanese citizens and were, you know, incarcerated under those conditions. But once I, you know, had read these arguments and heard about them for incarceration, something really clicked and changed for me because it's a strange thing. For a long time, I really didn't connect the ideas of camp with concentration camp and concentration camp with prison, right, or jail. Incarceration makes people sit up differently, right? It makes them go, wait a second, you know? And I think it then allows us to connect Japanese American incarceration to the other widespread forms of incarceration in our country. So, I believe it allows for a wider form of cross-racial solidarity and a wider application for social justice. So, I've been using it pretty deliberately since then. It really does still get, you know, I think a certain amount of attention. And I know that people kind of go with, well, people have been using internment for so long, I'll just kind of go with that. But I prefer incarceration.

[00:32:12] Host: No, I think it gives it the weight necessary.

[00:32:15] Nimura: Yeah, exactly.

[00:32:17] Host: And it also, looking at where we are now, you know, when we're talking about immigrants, we say they're in detention centers when they're being incarcerated.

[00:32:30] Nimura: Yes. Yeah.

[00:32:32] Host: Your rights are being taken away without due process, very similar to what happened. But that language is so valuable for how we tell that story.

[00:32:43] Nimura: Absolutely. Absolutely. So, yeah, thank you for reading about that and recognizing it. It might be a losing battle, but I do think that I think people really should think about when they use it and why they use it.

[00:33:01] Host: We'd like to thank Tamiko Nimura. Chapters podcast was produced by Past Forward and made possible with support from Chapman University and California Civil Liberties Public Education Program, a state-funded grant project of the California State Library. For more information, visit pastforward.org, chapman.edu, and library.ca.gov.