Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mitsuye May Yamada Interview
Narrator: Mitsuye May Yamada
Interviewer: Alice Ito
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 9 & 10, 2002
Densho ID: denshovh-ymitsuye-01-0039

AI: Had you been back to that site of the Minidoka camp?

MY: That was the first time, and one of the mistakes I think that we -- it took us too long to film that. It was very expensive for them because I couldn't get through some of the poems. It was the first time that I -- the thing is, the whole area was very, very different-looking. You know, when we first got there in 1942, it was very barren, really felt like the end of the earth, you know, like Mars or someplace. And so when we first got, when we first arrived, and drove up there, it looked so different. It was very green, I mean, there were trees -- it wasn't very green, but it was trees and there was vegetation and farmland and then of course telephone wires and so forth, so you didn't get the sense right away. But then once I started reading my poems in front of the camera and kind of recreating that moment, it was very hard for me. I kept breaking down and I'd have to say, "Oh, let's cut," so it just took about, something that should have taken a few hours took two days.

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