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Transcription: [00:03:21]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And that's where I was born. During World War II, my mother moved from San Pedro to Los--to the camp.

[00:03:31]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
My father was in Los Angeles when he was relocated. They married in camp and I was born in camp.

[00:03:38]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
5000, 6000 kids were born in those camps. Love goes on, you know? [[laughter]]

[00:03:47]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
So George, for people who don't know, could you just say what was the purpose of these camps.

[00:03:52]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Ostensibly, our protection. One of the reasons was, Japanese were gonna be hung, burned out, that was one of the reasons.

[00:04:02]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And actually, too, the whole west coast was filled with anti-orientalism.

[00:04:08]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
The first newspapers, I mean you know the Grange, The daughters of the American Revolution,

[00:04:16]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
they were really anti-immigrant, anti-immigrant, which is really scary, the whole thing going on in the day,

[00:04:24]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
so yeah so that was the atmosphere and Japanese were uh, hardly, I mean, that story is, you know, national security, again. They--they--Japanese were living as fishermen, in the port cities of San Pedro and up along Monterey and the --

[00:04:46]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
the Western Defense Command said, Hey, they're a threat!

[00:04:49]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
You know, they're going to join hands with the Japanese Army when the Japanese army lands!

[00:04:53]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Never happened, and there was never any sabotage.

[00:04:56]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
It's one of those lie kind of things that, there was never any evidence of sabotage but 'it was going to happen', you know? As a reason for Japanese being put in camps, yes.

[00:05:09]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
So, everyone in the Manzanar camp was Japanese?

[00:05:13]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Japanese American citizens and aliens, yes.

[00:05:18]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
So, so they were Japanese Americans who had become American citizens?

[00:05:22]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
born here.

[00:05:23]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
Born here nonetheless, in the camps?

[00:05:25]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Yeah. Yeah! So there was ah, I mean we got reparations, it was a big battle but, uh, yeah, we did get some reparations.

[00:05:31]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Uh Ah, and it was a long battle but, uh we fought for that, and uh it was it was wrong. It was wrong. Constitutionally wrong. For, to put American citizens into camps yeah.

[00:05:45]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
Lets talk about music. How did you come to be a musician, and what inspired you?

[00:05:49]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Uh, my father played an instrument called a biwa, a kinda...

[00:05:53]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
A biwa?


[00:05:54]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Yeah, a lute-like instrument actually it's related to, uh, sitars yeah and it's called a pipa in China

[00:06:02]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Uh, and when it got to Japan it became a biwa.

[00:06:07]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
My mother was uh a poet, uh she wrote in tanka, or Japanese poetry.

[00:06:11]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And I grew up in that milieu of uh artists and poets and musicians.

[00:06:20]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And so I was inspired to play, uh I studied clarinet and saxophone in grammar school and high school.

[00:06:27]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And uh about the time I went to college, I--I started really getting into bamboo.

[00:06:30]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Bamboo is just really important to Asian culture.

[00:06:35]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
And, this is--for example this is a flute that I've made uh from California bamboo.

[00:06:41]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Grown in my friend's backyard.

[00:06:44]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Yeah, uh and like me, it's different from Japanese bamboo.

[00:06:47]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Japanese bamboo is hard and grows slow and--

[00:06:51]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
So that's a shakuhachi, yes?

[00:06:53]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Yes this is a bamboo flute that was used by Buddhist priests as a form of meditation.

[00:06:58]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
I--I have a friend who plays shakuhachi, and he has a little-- a little kind of um, y'know shtick that he does at concerts.

[00:07:07]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
He'll say "I'll give 50 dollars to anyone from the audience who can come up and make a sound on this instrument."

[00:07:14]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
And to this day, he's never lost 50 dollars. It's very very hard to play this instrument, [laughter] even to make a sound on it.

[00:07:22]
{SPEAKER name="Ted Levin"}
George, show us what the shakuhachi sounds like.

[00:07:24]
{SPEAKER name="George Abe"}
Sure.