Ruth Sasaki | Interview 3 | January 26, 2022

FARRELL: Okay, this is Shanna Farrell back with Ruth Sasaki on January 26, 2022. This is our third interview for the Japanese American Intergenerational Narratives Project. Ruth, when we left off last time we had started to talk about your writing career. We talked about your full-time career and what was bringing you income, but I would love to talk to you a little bit more about your writing. We had also discussed how you had started writing when you were a kid and you were writing stories about horses and taking some creative writing classes and the theater workshop and things like that. I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your experience writing 00:01:00in the '70s and '80s and what kind of stories you were writing and themes you were exploring?

SASAKI: Sure. Well, the first story I ever tried writing based on Japanese-American experience was in 1974 and I had no success getting that published. I guess I just really wanted to try to bring that experience into the fabric of American literature because it was missing really. I think all Japanese Americans just felt that our experience was just invisible and any time I saw a Japanese American character in fiction, which was not at all often, I felt really sensitive about how that character was portrayed. I was so happy to find Lee in John 00:02:00Steinbeck's East of Eden, for example. [And VERY disappointed when that character was not included in the film version.] I guess I just felt this need to create empathy because Japanese Americans grew up in the United States and we learn all about the mainstream culture. We read the literature and we see the popular culture but the mainstream culture, there's nothing about us. I was tired of feeling like a ghost in my own country and I thought it's time that I opened up and we, artists and writers, opened up our world and invited other people in, whoever was willing to take that step, so I tried writing based on my experiences from that point on and finding very little success getting published.

FARRELL: 00:03:00I know that writing is a pretty solitary internal process, but were you finding inspiration from others to work on these stories, whether that's through the Asian American theater workshop or through some of the classes you were taking or your time in Japan? Or was it just something you really felt this personal push to do?

SASAKI: I think it was more of a personal push because I didn't really know any other writers. I mean that was one of the reasons why, in 1978, even though I was working full-time with a long commute, I decided to enroll in the creative writing program at [San Francisco] State, because I just needed to be around other writers to talk about stories. So yeah, it was just a personal push that I pretty much felt all my life.

FARRELL: Yeah, 00:04:00yeah. In these stories you're exploring your identity and your experience. Were there any themes related to that that you were really trying to write about during those years?

SASAKI: Well, that's a hard one. Because I think the themes were sort of submerged and that was the whole point of trying to like excavate what's going on there. For me I guess the overriding push, and I think I mentioned this in our past conversations, is that I was born after everything happened, right, seven years after the incarceration, after the war ended. I was one-and-a-half years old when we moved out of Japantown and were no longer surrounded by the community, so I grew up in this -- I don't say vacuum because I had a very happy 00:05:00childhood but I felt like I needed to fill in the blanks, maybe even more so than my sisters because they remembered our grandparents. They grew up somewhat in Japantown. When people talked about people in the community, they knew who they were talking about and I didn't know who the person was. Things like that. I felt this real need to fill in some of the blanks and just find out more about I guess what my grandparents had gone through and who they were.

FARRELL: What was your process of writing and exploring those things like, especially given that you were also working and trying to balance your time?

SASAKI: Well, let's see. 00:06:001974 I was kind of coasting because I had graduated from UC Berkeley earlier in the ear and I just kind of had two part-time jobs which were enabling me to exist in Berkeley in those days in a rent controlled apartment. I didn't have like career aspirations, like going to med school or becoming a lawyer. I thought I really want to write so I'm going to take this time to just try to write and get published. I forgot your question, sorry.

FARRELL: What your writing process was like then.

SASAKI: Oh, process, okay. I had two part-time jobs and I guess for me the process was always something, usually something that happened or something I saw or something I heard would sort of trigger images 00:07:00and then all these emotions would start coalescing around those images or that event or whatever. I'd have to like try to set it down because I really wanted to capture that feeling or convey that emotion. I would try to create a sequence of characters or a sequence of events that would enable the reader to experience the same thing. I didn't have like a regular every morning from 8:00 to 12:00 or anything. It was very haphazard.

FARRELL: When the moment struck?

SASAKI: Yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah, and were you starting to work on any of the stories that later were published in The Loom and Other Stories?

SASAKI: Absolutely, yeah. I think I wrote the first draft of The Loom in -- what year was 00:08:00that? Oh, that one came later. I think it was in 1978. Thanksgiving 1978. Yeah. I was living in Berkeley so I would go home periodically to visit my parents and so once when I did that my dad drove me back to Berkeley and on the way he dropped off my mom at her weaving class that she was taking in Fort Mason and she told me to come in to meet her friends so I went in. What I was really struck by was here was a world where my mother had friends and it had nothing to do with her being my mom. She'd always been mom and she was always there when you came home from school and she didn't really have a separate identity. That really impressed me and I went home and I started 00:09:00writing The Loom. The first draft was like five pages and over the years it expanded. So, again, I lost the question.

FARRELL: Well, that's okay. I was wondering if you had started working on any of the stories that were later part of The Loom?

SASAKI: Oh, yeah. Okay. So The Loom. Also I think the story First Love-- -- I remember writing a first draft of that somewhere around 1975 and it was written in the first person. Had a great first line. But I finished the first draft and I thought, "It's not there yet. I don't really know what it's about yet." Years later, maybe in 1982 or something, I was in Japan and I picked it up again. 00:10:00Totally rewrote it, third person, and realized what it was about. People always comment how funny it was and how they enjoyed it. I guess I see it as a tragicomedy about assimilation. That one also started from an image, the image that is captured in the final part of that story where she visits the ex-boyfriend's grandmother's house to deliver a Christmas present from her mother. Yeah, anyway.

FARRELL: When we were talking in some of our earlier sessions about when your parents lived in Japantown, I was thinking about the house from that story and was pulling in elements from your early life or your family's life with that house there. I was like, "Oh, I wonder if the house was 00:11:00inspired by that."

SASAKI: Yeah. It absolutely was somebody else's grandmother but it's still that connection and those kind of traditional expectations that the narrator cannot meet.

FARRELL: Yeah. It's also interesting, too, like thinking about if you're too close to something or you just need more time to figure out what is this about or where things are, because I do feel like that story in particular really captured a time. I got a real sense of that. It's interesting that you -- I don't really know if there's a question here -- but that you took a step back and came back to it later and maybe because you were in that time period, needing to reflect a little bit on it to make it full. But I don't know, that was just my experience as a reader.

SASAKI: I think that's absolutely true. I always joked that it takes me so long to write stories because I 00:12:00need to let them compost. Sometimes that process takes years.

FARRELL: I like that terminology. I might start to use it. Composting. In the '70s and the '80s, before you started in your MA program at San Francisco State, where were you trying to get published and what do you remember about that process? Did you have to mail a hard copy in or know an editor or something?

SASAKI: Well, yeah. I didn't have a computer until the late '80s. Yeah. We would have to mail in double-spaced hard copies. At the time I really didn't know much about publishing so I would try all of the women's magazines that published fiction. And not just women's magazines. Of course, the New Yorker, which was like "forget it." The Atlantic. And then there were all these magazines like 00:13:00Redbook, which published a lot of fiction. McCall's, Mademoiselle. That's probably where I went wrong, because I didn't actually read those magazines. I didn't read women's magazines. But they were one of the big markets for fiction, short fiction. I also submitted to some literary journals and I applied for grants or fellowships or awards some multiple times. Nothing. I remember usually it would be just a little form rejection slip. But I got quite a few personalized handwritten message, some where the editor couldn't spell and I thought that was kind of funny. I guess Redbook I submitted The Loom and they kept it for quite a while and I got a note saying they had recommended it for further consideration. I thought, "Oh, great." After another month or 00:14:00so I got a, "Well, we're very sorry but we regret that, although the story's beautifully written, it's not ideally suited to our readers." So then I thought, "Ah, okay." I started calling rejection slips the beautifully written but syndrome because I got a lot of letters like that.

I remember, I think, it was McCall's, I submitted First Love and they said, "Well, we enjoyed the story and it's well-written but it's really too young for our readers. Try -- " what was the -- I can't even -- Seventeen or something. No, maybe it was Mademoiselle that I submitted it to. So I submitted it to Seventeen and they said, "Well, it's too old." I thought, "Okay. I give up."

FARRELL: Were you getting any more specific feedback aside from, "It's beautifully written," but not for our audience kind of 00:15:00 thing?

SASAKI: No. The editor who couldn't spell suggested that I develop a minor character or something which had nothing really to do with the story. Not really.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. How did you take that when you were getting those rejection slips? What impact did that have on you?

SASAKI: Well, it didn't discourage me from writing but it did discourage me from submitting for publication. Yeah. Most of this happened before The Loom was published. I guess it was in 1991, I was thinking of just giving up 00:16:00writing, just stopping completely. I thought, "Well, I'm going to try one more time to get the collection published," not individual stories. Gather a bunch of stories together and try to get the whole collection published. I wrote query letters to three publishers and got a call from Graywolf. I was just thrilled because the reason I had approached them is because I spent a lot of time in those days in Black Oak books in North Berkeley and had noticed their beautiful paperbacks. At the time they were promoting multicultural literacy and they had these books about stories from the American mosaic. I read the foreword to one of the books, I can't remember which one it was, where the book buyer at -- was it 00:17:00Elliot's Bay in Seattle? -- Rick Simonson had written and he was saying something like the problem is that people from -- I can't remember his exact words. But people from these communities, underrepresented communities, can't get past the editors, who are mostly mainstream white editors. The mission at Graywolf [Press] was to get good writing into the hands of readers. I thought, "Yes! I like these guys." That's why I approached them.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's interesting and I do want to talk more about that in a minute. But before we get there, I would love to hear more about your MA program. I know you started in the '70s and then went to Japan and then ended up coming back and finishing. I'm wondering what it was like for you to come 00:18:00back. Were you doing the program full-time or was it part-time?

SASAKI: No. I was taking one or two classes in the evening a week. That's why it took me so long to finish the degree.

FARRELL: Okay. Because you were working full-time at this point?

SASAKI: Well, before going to Japan, from '78 to '79, I was teaching ESL in Berkeley, which was not a full-time job. I was taking two -- I don't remember if I ever took three. But anyway, I took at least two classes each semester that year and after I came back, from 1986 to 1988 and then I did my thesis and orals in '89, I took only one class a week because I was working full-time with a long commute.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. Especially if you're commuting down to the peninsula and then have to go back to the East Bay. Yeah, that's a long commute.

SASAKI: I was actually stopping on the way home to go to class.

FARRELL: Yeah, the little triangle 00:19:00there. You had started some of these stories in the '70s. What was it like for you to return -- not return necessarily but to workshop them in this context? And what was some of the feedback you were getting from either your professors or fellow students?

SASAKI: It felt really good to get them workshopped because I hadn't really shared them widely before. I remember I showed one of the early stories to a Nisei acquaintance, a friend of the family, and he read it and his reaction was, "Well, who's going to want to buy this?" I thought, "Oh, thanks." His wife was very encouraging. She was trying to 00:20:00compensate for that sort of blunt comment. To get it workshopped with people who are not Japanese American was really an opportunity because I didn't want my writing to be restricted to a Japanese American audience. Part of the whole thing is to open our experience to non-Japanese Americans so it was really valuable for me to get that because as far as I remember, I think I was the only Japanese American in most of the story workshops that I participated in. And, of course, the feedback was mixed. There were people who gave really good comments and there were people who -- it was like, okay, ignore that one. You sort of learned through the process whose feedback to really pay attention to and which ones to really kind of ignore. That goes for the instructors, as well. I had one woman instructor who read a story that was set in Japan and she 00:21:00said, "This neighborhood just sounds too idyllic." She had never been to Japan and that was the neighborhood I had lived in. Things like that. I just said, "Okay, forget that." But there were also instructors who were actually very good. I recall Leo Litwak. He had this technique that I came to really appreciate, where he would start the discussion of a story simply by summarizing it. No judgment, no comment. He would just summarize the thing. It's amazing, when you listen to that, you suddenly see all these, wait, that's weird. Or you see all these questions and issues and problems. So that was really good. Also, later my thesis advisor was Michael Rubin and he was great. He's the one who asked some very good 00:22:00questions about the twelve-page version of The Loom, which caused me to go back and rewrite it and the final version was twenty-two pages. That's the one that got published.

FARRELL: Did you feel supported by the faculty that was there?

SASAKI: I did in the story feedback, especially the two that I mentioned. It was hard to like really get to know people because we were only there like once a week at night. State is actually that kind of a school. Most of the students I think are older people who are working. They don't live there. They just stop, like me. That was fun, too, because I got to know some of them a little. Some of the other people would show up in more than one class and that was kind of fun to have 00:23:00a very brief but supportive community.

FARRELL: You had mentioned before that you were wanting the community and that's part of the reason why you decided to go to SF State. Do you feel like you got that community at the end of the program?

SASAKI: It wasn't a thing where I had friends that I stayed in touch with. But it was more of just people to really talk about writing with and, again, as I mentioned, it was hard to develop a close community because you only saw the person once a week and big class and that kind of thing. But I did feel that it gave me the opportunity to get away from the corporate world, where nobody was a writer and to talk to other writers. I am the kind of person, I needed a push. I needed a deadline or 00:24:00I needed an audience. It's very hard to just continue being motivated just kind of sitting and writing when you don't think your writing's ever going to be read by anyone.

FARRELL: Yeah and that's a question that I do have, especially with some of the things that you're writing about, some of the themes of the story, some of the topics. Your sister's death shows up in a few of the stories that are in The Loom, thinking about your identity. I think even your relationship with Japan in some of them, as well, too. What was that like for you? I have two questions about this. The first one is as you were writing these stories were you feeling like it was cathartic at all? I don't want to be too leading here, but how did it feel for you to write these stories?

SASAKI: It's very cathartic. I 00:25:00think I mentioned last time that when I came back from Japan in 1984 I felt very isolated because people weren't really interested in what I'd been doing for seven years or five years. The second visit was five years. I didn't feel there was anyone I could really share it with and so being able to write about some of that was very good for me. It was like therapy really, and kind of exploring it to see what it meant to me and that kind of thing. I think it was really good.

FARRELL: Okay, a way of processing things, too, it sounds like.

SASAKI: Right, exactly. I sometimes joke that something hasn't happened until I've written about it.

FARRELL: I've felt that. As you were starting to publish these stories, what was it like for you then to have 00:26:00such personal stories become public and they're out there in the world?

SASAKI: I didn't have a problem with it. I guess the first time a story of mine became public was in 1983. That's when I was still in Japan. I had from a distance submitted it to the Japanese American National Literary Award that they did every year. I submitted The Loom and it won. It won that award. I know in the contract it said something like, "We reserve the right to publish it wherever we see fit," but I really didn't expect them to put it on the front page of the JACL's national newsletter new year's edition. That's big. I thought, "Oh, my God." Because I wasn't home. I was in Japan. I thought I didn't have time to warn my parents that this was coming down 00:27:00so there were a bunch of phone calls. I remember my sister, one of my sisters saying, "We think it's neat that you write, Ru, but do you have to write about us?" It was actually really difficult. Really difficult because my family's the most important thing to me in the world and that's probably why I write about it so much. And yet, of course, they felt exposed. Even though all of it's not true. You start with certain things and then you have to kind of elaborate and makeup and deviate from the truth to make the story work. But the problem is that when people read it, they assume that it's all fact. It's just 00:28:00hard. I think that's the only story my dad ever read because he passed away in 1984.

Well, maybe I'm jumping ahead, but after The Loom was published my mom -- she's amazing, because I know that that story really was hard for her to take. I tried to explain it's a tribute to Nisei women of that generation but I also understood that the little details along the way sometimes can be very painful. She really came around to being very supportive, to the extent that she would like carry flyers from my book around in her purse in case she ran into somebody and then she would like give out flyers. It turned out okay. There's still a 00:29:00question, I think, with my sisters.

FARRELL: Okay. Your parents, were they members of the JACL? Were they getting the magazine in the mail?

SASAKI: I guess so. They must have because they certainly received it.

FARRELL: You just mentioned that it was a little bit more difficult with your sisters. Do you remember what the conversations were like when they read some of your stories?

SASAKI: Well, I mean, I already told you that one quote. I think for them it was a matter of being protective of our parents, not so much of themselves. [I was off in Japan, but they were here and witnessed my parents' devastation at the sudden exposure first hand.] I know my other sister would comment to people about the sisters in The Loom. She would say, "Oh, they're all Ruth." I would support her. I said, "Yeah, they're all like parts of me," to protect 00:30:00them, right. Actually, I think they got a little more used to it but it's hard to say.

FARRELL: That's always a good answer. They're all parts of me, instead of saying, "Yeah, it's about you." I know a couple of years before The Loom and Other Stories, the collection was published in 1991, you did publish Wild Mushrooms in 1988 and then The Loom -- the story The Loom -- separately in '89. What was that like for you to see those stories in print? What did that mean to you?

SASAKI: It was really great. It's like really the first time to be published in a wider than Japanese American forum. Wild Mushrooms was first published in San Francisco State's 00:31:00literary magazine, Transfer, and then at the reading somebody from Chronicle Books -- no, not Chronicle Books -- Fiction Network, the Short Story Review, which became Fiction Network later, was in the audience. He wanted to publish it in Short Story Review, so it came out there. And then The Loom was first published in the Making Waves Anthology, which was writings by and about Asian American women. It was very good to see that. It kind of gave me hope.

FARRELL: And, in fact, after it was published in Making Waves, it was reprinted in Push Cart, one of their prize editions for best of small presses.

SASAKI: Right. That came, I think, the year after The Loom was published, the book.

FARRELL: Yeah. What was that like for you to be in a best 00:32:00 of?

SASAKI: I was thrilled.

FARRELL: Do you remember, as you're reaching a wider audience than just the Japanese American community, what some of the reception to your work was by people outside the community?

SASAKI: I got comments from people, a gay fellow, who wrote and said even though it wasn't about being gay, he could really relate to a lot of it as a minority. An Indian American woman, actually more than one, they just really responded to it. I think a lot of people, even though they were not Japanese American, identified with that struggle to be seen in this culture.

FARRELL: Yeah. I think, 00:33:00too, you do a great job of illustrating family dynamics, too, and people who are white and part of the mainstream culture and are not used to what it feels like to not be part of that, can relate to the universal themes that are coming out of that, as well.

SASAKI: There was one comment by a Caucasian reader who said, "I lived in San Francisco and this book revealed a whole different San Francisco than I knew existed." I thought that was good.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. You wrote the three query letters to different publishers and you had a good feeling about Graywolf, it sounded like. Well, I guess I should back up. When you were submitting that query letter did you have the entire collection ready to go to send them?

SASAKI: Let me try to 00:34:00remember. I can't remember if Seattle was already written. I think it was. Yeah, yeah. I think it was. I think I did, yeah.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. What was it like for you -- so then it's accepted, to work with an editor there, especially in this context, where now you're working on a collection and not a single short story for a magazine? It's going to be its own thing. I would just love to hear about your experience.

SASAKI: Well, working with Graywolf was really wonderful. I didn't meet Scott Walker and Chris Faatz, who was the marketing director, until later, after the book was already out. But they were both so nice. I remember they always send you a writer's questionnaire to 00:35:00help market the book. I knew nothing about how publishing worked but I did read something about how many new trade paperworks are published every year. It's a very small number and the shelf life was something like one month or something. It was very kind of not a very promising picture. What I did is I tried to read about the publishing process so that I understood how everything worked so that I could time my input. I would do that. I would work with them and try to let them know about readings I set up on my own. They set up a reading for me in Seattle and I think two or three in San Francisco. I would like go around to stores and see if they had my 00:36:00book and if they didn't have my book I didn't have the guts at that time to go up to them and say, "You should buy this," but I would send them the postcard. If they did have it I'd offer to sign it. At that time some people would ask me to do a reading and so I did. [I also suggested using a visual of a woman weaving, from an Edo-era Japanese screen, for the cover. Graywolf was receptive so I had a Japanese friend help me secure permission from the museum to use it. But I remember Ellen Foos at Graywolf saying, "Wow, I'm going to put you on my short list of writers that we like working with." It was a very, very productive and friendly collaboration.

FARRELL: That's great. It sounds like you felt like they were helping you with the marketing even though books have a discouragingly small shelf-life window there. But it sounds like it was a pretty collaborative relationship with the promoting.

SASAKI: It was. Graywolf started out in Seattle and they have a 00:37:00lot of respect and contacts in the literary community. I think that was great. The other thing that I really admired about them is they keep their backlist alive forever so my book is still in print. It's like what, how many years ago? Is it thirty years ago or something? Yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. What was it like for you to do a reading in Seattle?

SASAKI: It was great. I got to meet the guy, Rick Simonson, who wrote the foreword to the book that inspired me to submit to Graywolf. It was a nice, nice crowd with maybe a reviewer or two in the audience. I also did some radio appearances when I was up there.

FARRELL: How did you feel about the radio appearances, being interviewed on the air about the 00:38:00 work?

SASAKI: I enjoyed it. I had always been shy and I was not a public speaker. But I think working as a trainer in my whole career helped a lot. And then especially with the book. I realized this is my five seconds of fame, I'd better take advantage of it because I really wanted people to read more Asian American literature and publish more Asian American literature. I enjoyed being interviewed except when I was misquoted later. Oh, this is for newspaper articles. I would often read the article and there was a sentence that made no sense and I thought, "Oh, my God, did I say that? Maybe I did."

FARRELL: I understand. Out of The Loom and other stories, out of the 00:39:00collection, two of those stories were selected for -- maybe at the time it wasn't NPR -- but Selected Shorts, which is now on NPR and those were both selected as part of it. The concept with Selected Shorts is that there's a program -- I think pre-pandemic they used to do these live -- and this is for the uninitiated. A celebrity or an actress or somebody who has a public profile would read the stories around this theme. It was Freda Foh Shen that read the stories, is that right?

SASAKI: Yeah, read the stories, right.

FARRELL: Out of that Seattle and American Fish were both read. What was your experience having your work selected for Selected Shorts?

SASAKI: Again, I was thrilled and I remember when one of them aired. It happened to be 00:40:00at a meeting with some coworkers and we all interrupted the meeting to turn the radio on. I mean that was pretty thrilling. When the other one was aired I think I was actually at my mom's house and we listened to it together. Unfortunately, I think it was the Seattle story, was read with kind of an accent, the mother's character, to make her sound like an immigrant. I was just mortified because the whole point of that collection is the Nisei generation trying to be American and they're not immigrants, they're not foreigners. After it ended I was apologizing to my mother because she's listening to this. And then I said, "I'm going to write a 00:41:00letter to tell them that I didn't like that." My mother said, "No, no, no. Don't write a letter. Don't write a letter."

FARRELL: So she was understanding about? It's not like you had control over that, but she was understanding about it?

SASAKI: Oh, no. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, she was totally understanding. But she didn't want me to make waves. I think her view was I should be grateful to them for broadcasting my story.

FARRELL: Yeah. But I understand, too, you don't want someone you care so much about to be a caricature either.

SASAKI: Right.

FARRELL: And then American Fish was also turned into a short. What was your involvement in that project and what was it like for you to see your story then on film?

SASAKI: Okay. I was contacted by Jesse Wine. He was a Korean American. He was a 00:42:00filmmaker just starting out and he had made a few short films and he had read it in a class at the University of Washington and thought it would make a great short film. I don't think we had email back then. Can you believe it? No texts. We must have written letters. That's hard. I think we talked on the phone several times, just so I could get a sense of him. He sent me one of his short films, which was quite abstract. I thought, "Hmm." We developed this kind of good relationship and I thought, "Yeah, that's fine." He promised he would not add any car chases or shootouts in back alleys so I thought, "All right, go for it." I wasn't involved at all in the filming because it took place -- I think it was in Uwajimaya in 00:43:00Seattle. He added a lot of dialogue to it, in the film, to sort of lengthen some of the scenes. But I thought he did a pretty good job. The only thing I noticed, which I never told him, is the Nisei women shouldn't be wearing shoulder bags. They should be carrying handbags.

FARRELL: Yes. A detail that you would know. Yeah, that's interesting. Also, am I correct in that you won a few awards -- writing awards -- as well?

SASAKI: Writing awards. Well, just the Pushcart Prize and the Japanese American National literary Award that I mentioned.

FARRELL: Okay. I'm also wondering, subsequently, after The Loom and Other Stories are published, it's out in the world, what was it like for 00:44:00you to write after that?

SASAKI: Well, I did continue writing. I did get a story published in Story magazine, a story called Harmony [which told the story of a Japanese American girl and her Black piano teacher, based on my aunt's childhood memories.] I also published a collection of short creative nonfiction pieces called The Dictionary of Japanese American Terms, which is now on my website. That was published in an anthology edited by Sylvia Watanabe. But, again, I actually started getting contacted by people. Lois Rosenthal contacted me and asked me if I had anything to send her and that's when I sent her Harmony. Originally she read it and she thought, "Well, no, that's not quite what we're looking for." I guess she felt it wasn't Japanese American enough. 00:45:00I wrote back and I said, "Well, it's not about being Japanese American. It's about being American." She read it again and she took it. I give her a lot of credit. I also was contacted by a couple of agents, both white women. One was in Boston and one was in the Bay Area. I met with both of them. Yesterday, in preparation for this interview, I was trying to remember when did I meet with the woman in Boston. When did I go to Boston? I cannot remember. But the one in the Bay Area read several of my pieces and her reaction was, "Maybe it's not possible for one writer to capture the Japanese American experience." But she didn't feel that my stories did.

FARRELL: It's really interesting, especially given that she contacted 00:46:00you and then to have that feedback. She's not really meeting you where you are. She's expecting something different.

SASAKI: Yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? A little bit more about what you were finding agents, editors, publishers? How they were representing Japanese American stories or your feelings about it?

SASAKI: Well, I guess my feeling is that before the Joy Luck Club was published, people simply felt that there was no market. No matter how good something was and how well it was written, there just wasn't a big enough market to justify publishing it. If they did, they would do like one a year. It might be, "Oh, we've already published our Asian American story." After the Joy Luck Club, everybody wanted mother/daughter immigrant stories and if it didn't fit into that little 00:47:00niche then they didn't think it represented the Asian American experience. I think the stories I wrote about before the war or The Loom got a little bit more interest than stories I wrote about after the war or subsequent generations. Because of course those are not Japanese enough. So yeah, it was frustrating because I just felt that there's this obstacle that people from underrepresented communities have to get over or get through and it's the gatekeepers of culture, the editors and the agents and publishers who were at that time primarily white. If you don't fit into their idea of 00:48:00what our experience is, then they just can't relate to it as being what they think it should be.

FARRELL: What were you finding specifically their idea of what the Japanese American experience was and how it should be represented?

SASAKI: We didn't get into specifics but I really felt that they were looking for what's weird or interesting that makes it different. Do you know what I mean? What makes Japanese culture and Japanese people different from Americans and that's not my aim at all. I'm not in that place.

FARRELL: Yeah, and, in fact, those narratives I think can do a lot more harm than good. You're not really helping lift voices that 00:49:00 way.

SASAKI: Right.

FARRELL: Yeah. I had read in another interview that you gave about how you're finding that people really wanted to reduce the Japanese American story to time in camps and not thinking about other aspects of other life. How are you encountering that?

SASAKI: I felt that anytime anybody wanted me to speak or something, they always wanted me to speak about the incarceration. Like the after-the-war stories got zero interest. And before-the-war stories -- anytime it's a Japanese American story you expect the incarceration to figure into it somehow, whether it's actually 00:50:00set there or whether it's immediately after, showing the aftermath or whatever. To me that was so limiting. I thought it was important but I personally never wanted to tell that story because I didn't think it was my story to tell. I wasn't there. I was so cautious, I guess, about misrepresenting something I didn't fully understand. It's quite a complex experience. The prospect of trying to capture it and convey it was something I didn't feel I was up to at that time which is why I always wrote about before-the-war stories or after-the-war stories. In fact, I had two collections in progress that I eventually kind of gave up on.

FARRELL: Yeah. This is making me curious about how this experience and some of the feedback you were 00:51:00getting from those agents and things, how that impacted your feeling about writing and your desire to continue trying to work with that publishing machine?

SASAKI: Well, I don't think it discouraged me from writing but I did gradually, partly because I was so busy -- I had the full-time job, the commute and then also increasing elder care responsibilities -- I just didn't have the energy to try to publish anymore. I didn't have the motivation or the energy. I just kind of stopped that. But I kept writing and having stuff on my hard drive that I wasn't doing anything with. Which is why it was so much fun to create my website and publish all those little pieces in 2015.

FARRELL: Yeah, I definitely want to talk a little bit about that. But that 00:52:00also, I feel like, leads into Topaz Stories and also what you were talking about, about not feeling like you're the person to tell that story. With Topaz Stories you're helping shepherd these stories into the world.

SASAKI: Exactly, yeah.

FARRELL: Yeah. In an effort to kind of move chronologically before we get there, I'm wondering if you could tell me a little bit about your first visit to Topaz in 2003 and what that experience was like for you?

SASAKI: Well, my sister and I heard of this opportunity to go with a group of, I don't know, maybe thirty to fifty other Japanese Americans. We asked my mom if she wanted to go. She was, I guess, in her eighties then. Her response was, "No. I have no desire to go back." Which is fine. That was fine. I understood. She hated hot weather. She had memories of Topaz as being hot and 00:53:00dusty. There was no reason for her to go back really. Joan and I went. It was a good experience. I have to say that compared to many other Japanese Americans who go back and they have this need to go every year, especially survivors, I didn't feel that. I almost felt like going once was enough. But what I really enjoyed, I think, was the bus trip, believe it or not. Because it's a long drive through Nevada and so we had nothing to do but talk to each other and because I'd been working in the corporate sector for so many years -- there are very few Japanese Americans 00:54:00working in my companies. Small companies, mostly white. My first company had some Japanese trainers but that's different from Japanese American. It was more of an international thing. I didn't feel very connected to the community at all. For like thirty years I had very little connection. Since the church days in San Francisco. For that was a highlight, really, meeting all these people who were all different ages. Other Sansei women with their mothers or a Yonsei writer or a 442 vet. There was a journalist from Japan who was very interested in our experience and got all of the Sansei and Yonsei together to interview us. It was a very good experience. It was nice to feel that connection.

FARRELL: Yeah. That's great. I was going to ask about if you 00:55:00felt more of a connection to the Japanese American community after that pilgrimage, but it sounds like you did.

SASAKI: I did, yeah.

FARRELL: What was it like for you to visit the site? Did that make you feel more or less or kind of the same connection to your family's heritage, your family's history?

SASAKI: I think I've always felt that connection. Visiting the site didn't really impact it that much.

FARRELL: How about with your sister? What was it like to have that experience with Joan?

SASAKI: It was fun. I don't really know what to say about that. We enjoyed the trip so it was a good experience.

FARRELL: Had she been before?

SASAKI: No, that was her first trip, too.

FARRELL: Okay. Have any of your other sisters 00:56:00 been?

SASAKI: Let's see. My other sister --

FARRELL: Has Susan been?

SASAKI: Yeah, she went in 2018.

FARRELL: Okay, so she went after you.

SASAKI: Yeah, okay. We all went in 2018.

FARRELL: Yeah. What was the significance of that trip? Did it change anything for you?

SASAKI: It didn't really for me. The main objective of that trip was to see the Chiura Obata exhibit at the University Art Museum. I guess my sisters and I didn't really talk about it that much afterwards. I don't really know how it impacted them.

FARRELL: Okay, okay. Did that trip make its way into your writing at all?

SASAKI: No.

FARRELL: 00:57:00This is kind of a time jump. But I know you're working in like 2003, in between the time where you are publishing your website. But if there's anything writing wise you want to add, you're very welcome to. Otherwise I was going to ask about the impetus for wanting to start your website and put things out there.

SASAKI: Well, I think the impetus was that my Aunt Kiyo passed away at the age of 102 in 2015. She was always the family storyteller. Every family gathering she'd start talking about the old days. She had some great stories. She had such an interesting life. That I realized when she died, because over the years I had listened very 00:58:00carefully and asked questions and as soon as I got home I'd sort of write down notes because I knew I'd forget details. I had all these notes filed under different titles like -- Chicago, Topaz, that kind of stuff -- and I just realized if I get hit by a car tomorrow, these stories are going to like die. I thought, "I need to get them out there." That was the impetus for starting my own website. I think it was in 2017 -- I can't remember if it was '17 or '18 -- I started publishing a series of her stories, Kiyo's stories, in chronological order from her childhood through camp. I had another series going of letters that we had discovered 00:59:00in my mom's things after she passed away that her friends had sent her when she was in Tanforan and Topaz. Unfortunately, we didn't have any of her letters but she had kept a few letters from friends. I started a series on letters, camp wartime letters. I think all of that was a desire to just get it out there, so if something happens to me or my computer or the cloud, they won't be lost.

FARRELL: Yeah and some of those stories, including the one about your mother's letters, eventually make it to the Topaz Stories. Is that right?

SASAKI: A couple of the letters did. There's one called "Good Friends" and there's another called "Left Behind." Wait. "Left Behind" isn't in the exhibit. But they're all on the website. 01:00:00I think most of them did make it because The Oda Boys shows several of the vmails that my mother saved from her adopted brother who was in World War II and wrote a lot of short messages.

FARRELL: Okay. Oh, wow. What was it like for you to put the website together and put these stories up there? Were you finding that people were reaching out to you who were interested or could identify in some way?

SASAKI: Well, it was fun for me because I knew nothing about WordPress. I had worked in e-learning but I hadn't really worked with WordPress. That was a learning curve. Also, I didn't really publicize the website. I just sent an email out to some friends. It's nothing like Topaz 01:01:00Stories. Topaz Stories is much more public. But people, I don't know how they found it, but a lot of people eventually made their way there. I've heard from some of the readers. Some say, "Oh, I saw you read at such and such," or "You visited our class." Some people contacted me. Actually, it was the Utah Poet Laureate, Paisley Rekdal, contacted me through that website and that's how the whole Capitol exhibit started.

FARRELL: Yeah, can you tell me a little bit more about the Capitol exhibit?

SASAKI: Well, let's see. Yeah. Paisley contacted me about a digital project she was doing and she wanted to include some Topaz related literature. We 01:02:00agreed that she would publish The Loom in her project. I told her about the Topaz Stories project but she was not interested in what she called oral history. Personally, I think it's not oral history. It didn't occur to me to like explain that at the time. But I asked her, "Do you know of any venues in Utah that might be interested in hosting an exhibit?" Because we had already done the one at J-Sei in Emeryville and wanted to expand. She introduced me to Max Chang, who is a businessman and I think he's a Taiwanese Utahn. He was born in Utah and he was also on the board of the 150th anniversary of the Transcontinental Railroad celebration. His big mission is to get more diversity into 01:03:00education in Utah. He had this ax to grind, that celebrations of the Transcontinental Railroad never showed the Chinese workers in photos. It was all the big wheels and people. He was great. He happened to be coming to Berkeley the next weekend. We had breakfast together. He was very excited about the collection and he had contacts in the Capitol so he got the ball rolling. It was originally scheduled to open in June of 2020 but of course it had to be postponed because of COVID.

FARRELL: Yeah. This is my fault -- we're jumping around chronologically -- 01:04:00well, with the Topaz Stories project, so your sister was active in Friends of Topaz and it's my understanding -- and please correct me if I'm wrong -- that she was going to write a story and she had asked you for help and it kind of evolved that you started to spearhead the project.

SASAKI: Yeah. It was actually the museum's fundraising letter, year-end fundraising letter. Somebody from Friends of Topaz recalled an anecdote that my sister had told her about my mother and she [the FOT friend] drafted a letter sharing the anecdote. My sister, with no explanation, suddenly emails me with the letter and said, "I think you could write this better." I read it and I thought, "It doesn't sound like my mom at all." I'm very protective and 01:05:00territorial about my mother. I wrote back and I said, "You want me to take a stab at it?" They said yeah so I rewrote it and people thought it was great. They ended up sending that out and then at that time, Ann Tamaki Dion asked me if I might be interested in helping them with the Topaz Stories Project. It was great timing because that was the end of 2017 so since the election of Trump in 2016 I had been becoming much more of an activist and attended so many protests. In fact, I had attended one dressed as a 1942 Japanese American with a bunch of other people to kind of emphasize that we've been through this and we don't want it to happen 01:06:00again so it was perfect timing. I thought, "Oh, great." Also, as I mentioned before, I'd never wanted to write about the incarceration but this was, for me, the perfect way to get those stories out there. And so yeah, I signed on and have been working on it ever since.

FARRELL: How were you recruiting people to share their stories?

SASAKI: Well, we started out by twisting the arms of all our relatives or anybody we knew. [I mean, almost every J-A we know was in camp or had family in camp.] Like I knew a couple of people in San Francisco through the church that I thought might have a story so I reached out. Anybody we knew that we could think of in our own personal networks. I kind of joked that I think we should have a Topaz Stories workshop with open registration because we need to find some stories but from people who are not related to 01:07:00us. I wanted to get like a diverse mix. I didn't want it all to be like from one point of view or whatever. We had that workshop in October of 2018. Had about fifteen people show up. That was really good because we actually got about four stories that are in the exhibit from that. People who we knew, they started contacting their networks, so it's kind of word of mouth. A lot of it was done virtually. I haven't even met some of our contributors in person.

FARRELL: That's right. I mean the pandemic. Yeah, that's really interesting. But also, I think, probably, too, leading up to that. The world is increasingly more 01:08:00digital. If you can't easily fly to Arizona or something you can meet virtually.

SASAKI: Yeah. Fortunately, most of the people we collected from are in the Greater Bay Area. Most of the Topaz people were from here so yeah.

FARRELL: Was there any criteria that you were looking at as you were recruiting people or trying to curate some of these stories?

SASAKI: Well, it took us a while to narrow it down. Because when I joined the team I had all these questions, like who's the audience? What's the medium. How are you going to deliver and share the stories? I think the team didn't really have a clear picture at that time because they only had a handful of stories, which were their own family stories. One of our team members had seen a book called Humans of New York and that was her vision. She wanted like a great visual with a little short accompanying text. Unfortunately, because of the 01:09:00prohibition on cameras in camp, there aren't a lot of great photos so that part was hard. But we did get some really, really great ones, a few really great black and white photos that were taken in camp that had never been published before. My theory is that a story should be as long as it needs to be so I didn't like to put a word limit on it. For the exhibit, of course, there has to be a word limit because there's a certain vertical height that spaces can accommodate so there are no long pieces in our exhibit. Some of them are very short but the length really varies. But I think what I'm looking for anytime somebody tells me what they're thinking, is I'm looking for that trigger, that core, that central image that we can 01:10:00arrange the rest of the story around. Something that makes a story. Something that's personal, not a news report or a resume.

FARRELL: Yeah, like the engine that drives a story.

SASAKI: Right. It's the feeling really. I want to know how the person felt and what it means to them and sometimes it takes a little bit of digging to get that out. It was very much a back and forth process.

FARRELL: Yeah and it's interesting, on the website, too, I really like that it's a mix of survivors but also descendants. It's not just one thing. It's a myriad of stories. Also in terms of the photographs, there are, as you mentioned, some that hadn't been published before but also there are some that are from pre-war, post-war. There are marriage photos, that kind of thing. I might be wrong but I feel like I remember scans of 01:11:00letters and things like that. It's lots of materials there that I think if it were just camp photos, that could be reductive. But because you are capturing these photos in different times of people's lives, painting a fuller picture. I'm wondering, as you are working with some of the contributors, what your experience was like now working as an editor and trying to help shepherd those stories and work with them to find that engine, to find that feeling to drive the story?

SASAKI: It was great. I don't know if they thought so. But for me, as a writer myself, I've taken a lot of feedback and so I think I've developed a fairly tactful way of delivering it. Usually I try to mess as little as possible with their 01:12:00material. There are degrees. Some people sent me something and I said, "That's ready to go." I didn't have to do anything. Other times I might say, "What do you think about starting with this instead and then letting it unfold because that creates some suspense." Might be a little order thing or it might be cutting out some details that I didn't think added anything. Stuff like that. I tried not to tamper with their voice. That's why the review process of the content for the exhibit was stressful for me, because people wanted to change things that actually changed the contributors' voices. I was very firm about that. We'll make punctuation changes if you insist. We'll 01:13:00remove the space around the em-dashes but I'm not changing the person's voice.

FARRELL: As an oral historian I very much understand and appreciate that, and as a writer, as well. Voice is incredibly important. Were there moments where you needed to help a writer find their voice?

SASAKI: I don't think it's the voice that we needed to find but sometimes we needed to find what the overriding -- not message, because these aren't fables or anything with a moral -- but the center. The center of the story. [The reason why it's this particular incident or memory that the contributor wants to share.] Sometimes I would have to ask for more details. More details than I actually needed just so I could see the whole better but it was a very 01:14:00rewarding experience. I think overall the contributors were happy to have their stories shared because their motivation, I think in most cases, was they were paying tribute to their parents or grandparents or whoever was in the camp and to bring their stories to a wider audience was very satisfying.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. It's a big deal. In the workshop, who were you seeing as the participants? Were there any survivors or was it mostly descendants?

SASAKI: There were survivors. Yeah. Yeah. There were quite a few actually. We opened it up. We just said if you have a Topaz story. We ended up with -- I can't remember off the top of my head but most of them were 01:15:00either survivors or descendants. We had someone who was born in Topaz before the hospital was open and someone who was like two to five years old in camp. We had several survivors although I can't remember exactly how many.

FARRELL: Yeah. Also, I believe that Jonathan Hirabayashi was a participant in the workshop?

SASAKI: He was. Yeah, yeah. We were so thrilled when he signed up because I said, "Who is this guy? Does anybody know him?" Nobody knew who he was. I thought, "Yes! He's not related to us." He had a great story about his parents courtship in Tanforan. When we were preparing for the J-Sei exhibit, like around 01:16:00March or something in 2019 he happened to mention that he had worked as an exhibit designer for the Oakland Museum, did we need any help. We said, "Yes!" And I don't know, he may regret it now, but he's been working really hard for us ever since.

FARRELL: Yeah. That's a very serendipitous thing. That's great. With the graphic designing background, the Oakland Museum, that's perfect. So he helped with the J-Sei exhibit?

SASAKI: Yes.

FARRELL: I think for that one you had selected about twenty stories. Is that right?

SASAKI: Right. That was about as much space as we had.

FARRELL: Okay. What was the reception like when you opened the exhibit?

SASAKI: It was really positive. I think about ninety people came to the opening program. It was a wonderful event because people were there reading the stories. We had 01:17:00provided these sort of high chairs in cases people wanted to sit while they were reading because a lot of the attendees were in their eighties and nineties; and we had binders for the stories that we didn't have room to exhibit and so people were sitting at tables reading the stories and then people were like chatting with each other and networking. I just thought the whole point was to really bring people together. I think everybody is looking for an opportunity to share and it was also great because we found a lot more stories from that exhibit.

FARRELL: Is the Topaz Stories collection growing? Are you still actively taking stories?

SASAKI: It's still growing. We had about, I can't remember exactly, maybe fifty-six stories at the time of the J-Sei exhibit. We now have 01:18:00seventy. I'm still accepting stories because, as far as I'm concerned, as long as they're out there--Yeah, so we're still accepting stories.

FARRELL: That's great. I do know that there were some newspaper or radio pieces that came out that were promoting and highlighting the Topaz Stories collection, which is fantastic. Did you feel like that helped grow your audience or even attract new contributors?

SASAKI: It really did. There was an article in the East Bay Times. A lot of people who came to the exhibit came because of that article. So yeah, I think the publicity helped a lot.

FARRELL: One thing that you mentioned that I do want to go back to a little bit was around 2016. The election and 01:19:00the things that followed, including the border separation. Did you participate in a march around Lake Merritt in 2008?

SASAKI: Yeah. It wasn't a march. It was just a big protest. It was 2018, around June or something. It was just a big protest. It was 2018. It's around June or something. There was a big protest there and that's the one where we dressed up as World War II Japanese Americans. We got a lot of press from that, too. It was amazing. I had created a little cage using a Target wire bin, a storage bin that looked like a cage with little dolls inside like children and one was lying down covered by aluminum foil. I wanted a sign that would like be visceral, not just a "stop incarcerating kids." There was also a 01:20:00sign that said something like, "My family spent 3.5 years in a camp. It wasn't a summer camp," because at that time some people [i.e. some (GOP) politicians, were comparing the tent cities at the border with summer camps] -- it really stopped traffic. So many people came up to us to take pictures. We had Jewish people, Holocaust survivors, coming up to talk to us. I've never had that much interest or attention in a protest. We made the newspapers. That was the first border separation protest that I had attended.

FARRELL: Yeah, and then in 2019 you flew to Oklahoma to protest border separation and that was part of Tsuru for Solidarity, is that right?

SASAKI: That's correct. It was in July.

FARRELL: July, okay.

SASAKI: Oh, June, I'm sorry, June of 01:21:002019. Tsuru worked really fast because they only heard about the impending incarceration of something like 1500 kids at Fort Sill about ten days before the actual demonstration so they pulled it together really quickly. About twenty-six of us flew out to Oklahoma and there was like a press conference at the gate at Fort Sill, which I think was really impactful because we had like six survivors from various camps and then a lot of other people. Twenty other people. All they wanted to do was to just share their story and explain why they were there and, of course, the MPs were trying to make us move and they were 01:22:00threatening to arrest us. I was thinking that's not a good visual, arresting these little old ladies who are obviously not violent. But everybody risked arrest because we didn't know if we were going to get thrown into jail. After the press conference, there was like a rally at a public park in Lawton and we were joined by two or three hundred allies from all different groups -- the Native American community, the Latino community. Black Lives Matter. There were Holocaust survivors and just people from the area. That really impressed me because that was my first visit to Oklahoma so I didn't know what to expect. I met these two young Caucasian women who had driven all the way up from Texas to 01:23:00attend the rally. It made a big impression on me because I felt they were grateful to us for coming to their little town to raise the visibility of the issue and their issues and the speakers were from all of the different groups and they were great speakers. It was almost the perfect example of solidarity in how people always say, "Well, we're not free until we're all free." It was like all of us getting together and mutually speaking out so it was really an effective protest, I felt. Tsuru deserved a lot of credit for organizing that.

FARRELL: What impact did that experience have on you?

SASAKI: Well, I think it really motivated 01:24:00me. I guess it was also great seeing how the survivors were able to turn their own trauma into something productive and something meaningful. I think, not just on me, but I think it really energized the entire Japanese American community across the nation, which traditionally only like small segments here and there have been activists. There have always been activists but it wasn't like a mainstream thing to do. People who I knew, who I never imagined going to a protest, were suddenly joining in and protesting so I think it was really important and really, really impactful.

FARRELL: Were you seeing a lot of the younger generation there?

SASAKI: Yes, there was. There were quite a few younger Yonsei or maybe even more. I'm not 01:25:00 sure.

FARRELL: Yeah. I feel like some of the conversations I've been hearing is that a lot of the younger generations are very active in wanting to raise the attention and very interested in their heritage.

SASAKI: Yeah and that gave me a lot of hope because I thought when we go it'll still be alive. It was very encouraging to see the younger generation get out there and get involved.

FARRELL: In your experience at Lake Merritt and then also in Oklahoma, you had mentioned a couple times that the Jewish American community was there and some Holocaust survivors. You know, as a writer, that language matters and there has been the controversy over the term concentration camp. But I'm wondering 01:26:00if that ever became part of the conversation or something that you were thinking about -- that term, the impacts of language, the word choices that you were making -- during these protests, during your interactions, or even as you're working on Topaz Stories?

SASAKI: Well, I think actually at the rally I was talking to a fellow who was wearing a Holocaust Museum t-shirt and I can't remember if he himself was a survivor or his relative or something. But an LA Times reporter saw us together, took a picture, because I was carrying my cage, and asked about that. He came out very strongly to say that the Japanese American camps in World War II were concentration camps.

FARRELL: The reporter or [the protestor]?

SASAKI: No, the Jewish fellow that was interviewed with me.

FARRELL: Interesting, okay, so it was 01:27:00pretty simpatico. There was no antagonism?

SASAKI: No, not at all.

FARRELL: Interesting. Yeah.

SASAKI: For myself, I think I had kind of, even before that protest, understood the power of language and euphemisms and in the Topaz Stories project it was tricky because I wanted to preserve the language that the contributors used and in that era everybody called them internment camps. Everybody said, "We were relocated or evacuated." Anytime they spoke I preserved whatever language they used. If they used concentration camp, I kept it. But in any commentary I would use my preferred terms, forced removal or detention center or concentration camp because that's what they were.

FARRELL: Yeah, yeah. It's interesting to hear you talk about 01:28:00those experiences and those choices from your perspective. I appreciate you sharing that. Thank you. I'm wondering a little bit about the impact that working on Topaz Stories has had, becoming involved in this activism. What impact did that have on you? I know this is pretty recent. It's all that's happening and then the pandemic hits so it's not like a lot of these things can continue. I'm curious about how it had impacted you?

SASAKI: Well, I think it has kind of focused me and given me a concrete direction to devote my energies toward. Because I had 01:29:00just retired at the end of 2016 and so for the first few months I was just kind of experimenting with how I wanted to structure my retired life. It involved a lot of volunteer activities and things. But it just all came together. The protesting, the incarceration stories, and the link between the issues we were protesting against and the incarceration. It really helped me actually survive the lockdown because I had this to work on.

FARRELL: Since you're working on these things and you're having these conversations, you're working with a community during the pandemic, with the rise of hate crimes and that kind of 01:30:00thing, was that something that was on your mind?

SASAKI: Oh, definitely. We kind of completed the content review process with the Utah Capitol Preservation Board and Topaz Museum in March of 2020 in preparation to open in June and then everything was put on the back burner. That review process had been so stressful that I just said, "I'm taking a break. We're not opening in June. We don't know if we'll ever open so I need to get away from this," so I actually did very little related to the project for almost a year. Of course, in early 2021, there were all those attacks against Asian Americans. I just thought "we have to get these stories out there." They're just sitting on my computer. I had actually been advocating for a 01:31:00website since 2018 or maybe it was early 2019 but the museum was kind of against it. We couldn't get a clear answer on whether they supported it or not. I think the vision was that they wanted to put the stories on their website so people would go to their website to read the stories. But nothing ever happened. About every year I would check in and say, "How's that going? Are there any plans to like get moving on that?" There never were so I kind of reached the end of my rope with all the anti-Asian attacks and I said to our local team, "We need to get those stories out there. It's time." I actually went ahead at 01:32:00the end of March and bought the domain name because I thought, "I'm just going to create the website whether or not -- I don't care. It's going to happen." Ann Dion managed to get the okay for us to create it ourselves so the whole month of April I was holed up building the website and that was really fun. It was really fun. A couple of days before launch I gave access to the rest of the team here and asked them to like click on everything to test it, see if everything works because we all have different devices. The only device it didn't work on was my eight-year-old iPad. I thought, "Okay, that's probably good enough." But the anti-Asian violence was a definite catalyst. We launched on May 1st, in time for 01:33:00Asian Pacific Islander Heritage month.

FARRELL: What did it mean to you to help people tell their stories and put them out into the world, especially at this period of time?

SASAKI: It's very rewarding because I think a lot of the people, especially in their eighties, nineties -- and, actually, one of our contributors is over a hundred now. They want their stories to survive them so I think they feel a kind of relief. "Oh, good. It's out there now. I don't have to worry about it." For me it's been very rewarding. I sometimes think it was my way of not replacing but filling the 01:34:00hole that was left when my elders passed away. Because I feel like I have a bigger family of elders now.

FARRELL: What are some of the things that you are most proud of? Whether that relates to your work in any capacity or just in life in general? What are the things that you're most proud of?

SASAKI: Most proud of, hmm. That's a good question. Well, I think one of the things I love the most is taking like a blank page or nothing and then creating something, whether it's e-learning or Topaz Stories website or the website on the culture of Iraq with simulations and things or 01:35:00anything. Any chance that I've had to be creative and to actually implement the creation and share it, I think those things give me a lot of pride and satisfaction.

FARRELL: What has it meant to you to have such a long writing career and to be able to share your stories in such a way?

SASAKI: It's wonderful because I had a lot of stuff written that no one was reading because there was no outlet for it. Maybe my team thinks I'm obsessive but I enjoy it when I see pictures of people visiting the exhibit and reading 01:36:00stories. It's just thrilling to me. Very satisfying.

FARRELL: What are your hopes for the future of representation of Japanese American and the nuance, the broad experiences, not just so myopic, but in literature and media? What are your hopes for the future of that?

SASAKI: Well, I know in the past there were always little, brief timespans when the door would crack open a little bit and a few works would get out there and there'd be this interest and then it would die down and then we'd have to wait like twenty or thirty years for the next crack of the door to open. Right now I think there's an awful lot of interest. There are a lot of people from underrepresented communities creating work and getting 01:37:00attention. The internet has helped. You can like get attention that way. Social media. I'm hoping that it's going to be a sustainable movement and that it won't fizzle out after a few months, as it always has done in the past.

FARRELL: Yeah, or move backwards.

SASAKI: Yeah and I think the more people from these communities who get into positions of power, the better because then they will be the gatekeepers.

FARRELL: Right. What's your hope for the future of Topaz Stories?

SASAKI: Well, I'd like it to travel, to be seen in many different places. I personally would love to see it go to Japan. But I think it might be even more important for it to go to other parts of the United 01:38:00 States.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's a good point, especially where there's still not a lot of knowledge about this history.

SASAKI: Or even England or Europe would be good, too, because right now the issues are happening everywhere -- this wall of hate and exclusion. I'd just like to see Topaz Stories get a wider audience. We have so far been visited by people from thirty-four countries, the website, so that's encouraging.

FARRELL: Yeah, that's incredible. I think that might be all the questions that I have for you unless I missed anything or you want to add anything.

SASAKI: I can't think of anything. Thank you so much for your patience and listening to me talk on and on.

FARRELL: Thank you for sharing all of 01:39:00this. It's been my pleasure and I really feel privileged to have gotten to talk to you and hear about all this. I appreciate everything and your perspective and insight and all of your work, too, so thank you.

[End of Interview]