When Jim and I wrote this book and we got the book out…and it was very difficult to get published and it certainly never would’ve been published if it wasn’t Jim because he was Caucasian, he was a published writer…I mean in those days, in ’73, you know, they had signs down in the New York underground that said, you know, American flags saying “Made in Japan” because that’s when they were very hostile about Japanese goods. It was a wave of anti-Japanese feeling even then. So we were very fortunate to have Houghton-Mifflin and San Francisco Books have the courage to bring it out.
Date: December 27, 2005
Location: California, US
Interviewer: John Esaki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum