Walter Pollock Interview
Item
Title
eng
Walter Pollock Interview
Description
eng
Talks about his father, Walter Pollock senior's experiences as service director for the Fresno Assembly Center and how it profoundly affected him for the remainder of his life. He discusses his fathers papers and how Walter Pollock senior collected information on the incarceration of Japanese Americans and had planned to write a book based on his experiences at the assembly center during World War II.
Creator
eng
Pollock, Walter
eng
Lau, Tammy
Relation
eng
Walter E. Pollock Papers
Coverage
eng
Fresno, California
Date
eng
11/6/2014
Identifier
eng
SCMS_wepp_00001
extracted text
>> Tammy Lau: Today is Thursday, November 6, 2014. We're at the Henry Madden Library and I'm Tammy Lau, the
head of special collections with Walter E. Pollock the third. So welcome and we'll begin our interview. Thank you for
agreeing to do this.
>> Walter Pollock: Great. Thank you.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us a little bit about your father, Walter Pollock?
>> Walter Pollock: Yes I can. Well, kind of, the demographic details are that he was born in 1908 and he was born in
Florida and he and his family moved from there to Chicago. And he had a number of brothers and sisters and eventually
the whole Pollock family moved to Southern California, which is, kind of, where the story of his involvement in Fresno
begins. And when he moved to Southern California this was when he was probably high school age and a little later on
he met the women who would become my mother in Los Angeles. She was going to UCLA and got a degree in Art and
they were married. And after they were married they moved to Bakersfield and the story leads from there to Fresno. So
that's, kind of, the early biographical summary.
>> Tammy Lau: Okay. Thank you. So how did he come to Fresno and how did he become the Director of Services at
the Fresno Assembly Center?
>> Walter Pollock: Well that story starts in Bakersfield and when they moved to Bakersfield my father did a number of
things for employment in Bakersfield. He built furniture for a while and he did some other things, worked in the oil
fields in those days for a while. Then he got a job with the Works Projects Administration who had constructed facilities
to house people who had come to California as part of the migration associated with the decibel. And I can't tell you all
the details of that but basically I think what the state did or what the federal government did and perhaps jointly was
they built areas where people could camp in effect, large camps for laborers and they provided facilities and services,
common facilities and services and things like athletic events and community activities and newsletters. So in a sense it
was an assemblage of people that required services and he was hired to help design and provide those. So he was very
much involved in, for example, newsletter publications and recreational activities in those decibel facilities. And as that
was, I believe he was still employed with them, the decisions were made with regard to the internment of Japanese
Americans as World War Two began. And the state director of the Works Project Administration in California asked my
father whether he would be willing to take on a job as services director in the Fresno Assembly Center. And at that time
he didn't know very much about what to expect or what he would find there, what it would involve but he agreed to do
it. That's how his presence here in Fresno at the Assembly Center came about.
>> Tammy Lau: Do you know what his job entailed?
>> Walter Pollock: I do. I know generally what it was. His part of it was for him to figure out when he got there. So as
you see as you look at his journals and some of his writings it was a bit of a voyage of discovery for him. But his
responsibility were basically to be sure that the necessary services were provided and that included everything from
facilities for sanitation to medical facilities to commissary or food services and also to things like recreation and
communications and newsletter publication inside the Assembly Center. But his basic job was to try to help make this as
good an experience for the people were interned as it could be and realizing that that whole project involved starting
from a very bad set of circumstances for these people. So that was his job. And when he showed up at the Fresno
Assembly Center he had to figure out how to do that. It was all-- at the time he arrived it was already had been
constructed so there had been some design work and construction work started. It wasn't complete but I think from the
day he arrived at the Assembly Center until the first internees arrived was a matter of weeks, just a few weeks.
>> Tammy Lau: How long was he there?
>> Walter Pollock: About six months was the duration. So he was there for the duration, although some of the
relationships lasted a lifetime and he-- And I know that he kept track of people that were at Fresno as they-- and I
believe most of them were transferred to Jerome Arkansas, so. So it was six months of his life but it had all kinds of
ramifications, some quite profound.
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
0
>> Tammy Lau: Thank you. So can you elaborate any more about the impact that this experience had on him?
>> Walter Pollock: Well I think that it was-- There were a lot of things that worked for him. One of them was he, like
everyone else in this country, was caught up with the surprise and the anxiety associated with the outbreak of war. So
there was a great deal of fear going on. And there was-- and I guess maybe this is a personal opinion but what happened
and the interning Japanese Americans was in a substantial measure driven by fear in this country. And so I think there
was that whole dynamic at work with him, that really he was always aware of and it was, kind of, a you had to be there
and live in that time to fully appreciate how difficult things were. But that intersected directly with the experiences he
had there with thousands of people who were somehow were making the best of it and had the-- And I can't say the
phrase in Japanese but there is a phrase that means it can't be helped, make the best of it. And I think he was profoundly
taken by that as well. So trying to reconcile the grace and the dignity that the people live their lives with the
circumstances was very difficult for him. But I think the goodness of the people that he got to know and shared six
months of his life with is a thing that, kind of, shined through for him.
>> Tammy Lau: So what do you think he really thought about the internment of Japanese Americans?
>> Walter Pollock: I think-- I don't think he had figured that out completely by the time he died. I think he was still
wrestling with that. In his heart of hearts he knew it was an awful mistake and one-- And I think that's part of his
motivation for keeping so many materials for so long. He kept everything. And I think that he believed that it was
important that people have the historic record of everything that happened and be able to learn from it in the future. And
whether he could have ever gotten himself to the conclusion that this was a horrible mistake and I don't know. I never
had that conversation with him. He was close to being there I think at the time that he died. But I think that was a-That's a really good questions. It's a difficult problem that I'm pretty clear in my mind but I'm viewing this from the
perspective of somebody that's lived a generation later.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us what he did save and what his collection entails?
>> Walter Pollock: Boy I would-- The biggest-- The way I'd probably summarize it is he saved everything that he could
and it ranged from a complete directory of everyone who was interned at Fresno. And it included even members of the
family, where they were from, in primarily California, to he saved all the newsletters that were ever published in the
camp. He saved all of the official directives and orders and, kind of, the institutional structure of the Assembly Center.
That is what were the orders, who was giving them, what did they say, what were internees prohibited from doing and
activities? So there was quite an inventory of rules and regulations and constraints and that kind of physical background.
He saved pieces that give glimpses into things that went on at the Assembly Center. He saved sheet music and he saved
the architectural drawings of the Fresno Assembly Center, which they-- And I-- This is one of these things when I've
had a chance to examine them in detail now I wish I had had the opportunity to ask him about it because it appears to
me that those drawings were done by someone who was intern at Fresno, by a skilled Japanese-American draftsman.
And it looks like they were architectural drawings that examined the potential for betterments at Fresno. It looks like
they were, the draftsman was trying to capture what had been built and what could be done to improve it because there
are things on it like new possible healthcare hospital facilities and a recreational facilities and I think some of those
might have been built in the Assembly Center. Some of them probably weren't and what I-- And other things I don't
know, for example, is was there any contemplation that internees would be kept longer than turned out they were in
Fresno. Maybe they were contingency plans for if Gerome Arkansas was not completed on the time table. So when I
look at this with and think about it I can think of a lot of questions I wish I'd asked but the drawings are magnificent.
They really are extremely skillfully done and they give a picture that of what the place was like. And also he-- My father
wrote some personal narratives. He wrote a narrative, which I find fascinating, about his impressions as he walked
around the Fresno Assembly Center for the first time and examined the status of construction, the buildings, the
facilities and I think what he was doing was realizing what an enormous task it was going to be to make this six months
livable for the people that were to be interned there. So. And there are many other materials he saved. He did a lot. He
was doing-- He was working on a book at the time he died so he'd been collecting every bit of materials from others he
could. He collected many books or papers that were written on internment and including both in the United States and in
Canada where there was a similar thing that occurred. So he-- There were quite a few research materials that he
collected. He tried very hard to find photographs of the Fresno Assembly Center and he did some made a lot of inquiries
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
of governmental agencies and others and that I can only guess that they just weren't allowed. Or perhaps they didn't
occur because that was the thing he wished that he could obtain. And apparently there were none available at the time. I
know if he had any he would have kept them. He also kept a painting that was given to him by a famous and extremely
skilled Japanese-American painter that was interned at Fresno, Henry Sugimoto.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us a little bit more about that painting?
>> Walter Pollock: Yes. The painting is a-- I think it might be the only painted image of that Assembly Center. I've
looked at Henry Sugimoto's paintings that are in museums elsewhere and what it depicts is it's a scene that depicts the
buildings and some people that are outside the building performing tasks. It shows clothes hanging on a clothesline and
someone sitting what appears to be perhaps a loom and it captures, I think, what it felt like to be in that center. And I
think it might have been painted outside the building that Henry Sugimoto was interned in. And it-- These were not, for
those who aren't familiar with what these Assembly Centers were like on the inside, this was not individual homes for
people. This was a series of perhaps 20 or 30, kind of, long barn like structures. They were built on a fair grounds and
they were-- They accommodated multiple families with individual with only relatively thin partitions between
individual family units. There were no-- The toilet and bath facilities were not in the individual units. They were outside
in other buildings. So this painting, kind of, captures what it felt like to be in the Fresno Assembly Center and it-- Henry
Sugimoto was a wonderful and skilled artist. If you look at his other work he was a magnificent artist. He painted lots of
different forms and there are a number of his paintings that are on display in other museums. I understand the
Smithsonian owns three of them at this point.
>> Tammy Lau: So can you tell us why you decided to donate the collection to Fresno State and to this library?
>> Walter Pollock: Well there's probably about three parts of that. One of them is it was very clear to him that he
wanted these materials to be preserved for history. He didn't want them to be sold. He wanted, he believed-- He was-My father was worried that this would be forgotten. And he wanted them to be preserved and to have people to have
access to the information. So I guess the first criteria is we thought about, and we, our family has taken care of these
materials for 72 years. And so we had begun to think about where they belong. But our first criteria was they need to be
available to the public and for learning and education. Second was they need to be preserved and they need to be
preserved competently and professionally. Some of the materials are need to be probably digitalized or preserved in
ways that because they will eventually deteriorate. Newsletters that were probably 75 or 70 some years ago on not
particularly great quality paper are not going to last forever. And some are beginning to show some signs of
deterioration. And also they need to be in Fresno. There are others that have collections that relate to Japanese
Internment but this was about Fresno and they need to be here in Fresno. And the other consideration was as we-- I need
to tell you a little bit of the story as to how we, what led us to Fresno and to the Henry Madden Library because I didn't
know anything about the Henry Madden Library at the time that we were really thinking about finding a permanent
home for these materials. We live on Bainbridge Island in Washington state part of the time and for those who have
studied Japanese internment Bainbridge Island is a noteworthy place because the Japanese-Americans on that island
were evacuated by boat to the internment centers and Bainbridge Island is the setting for a famous, what's a novel but
it's a historic novel called Snow Falling on Cedars. The Island isn't named that in the book but it's a story about
Bainbridge. The island recently built a beautiful memorial to Japanese internment, which really it's built on the site
where families walked to the boat and it was designed by the same architect that did the Museum of the American
Indian in Washington D.C., The Smithsonian Museum on the mall and it is a spectacular memorial of Bainbridge Island.
But anyway my wife Louise and I visited that and we got to thinking that we were so touched by it when it opened we
thought I wonder if anyone has constructed a memorial in Fresno because we were thinking how do we find somebody
in Fresno that could help us with these, a disposition of these materials. Well low and behold, thank you for the internet,
we can go online and discover that yes indeed a memorial has been constructed. And the particular one we found was
for the Pinedale Assembly Center, which it was kind of unique. There were actually two in this geographic area. But at
the bottom of the item which I read about the Pinedale memorial it had a contact person and it gave a phone number. So
I made a call and left a message and said who I was and I was, kind of, you don't know me but you were good enough to
put your name and your phone number on the Pinedale memorial and I have all these materials and I wonder if you
could give me any thoughts about how they might be preserved and in Fresno. And sure enough I got a call back and
began to learn about what's already occurred here in Fresno. And it in those very early conversation it was pointed out to
me that the Henry Madden Library the special collections part of this activity is a wonderful place and has wonderful
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
capabilities and actually was undertaking a program to try to preserve and protect and digitalize and make available
information of this kind. So it was a kind of a serendipitous thing that was that happened because I visited the memorial
on Bainbridge Island and looked on the internet and sure enough. So and then as I-- as we talked further and I talked
with you Tammy, we corresponded, I realized this was absolutely perfect. There was no better place for these materials.
And not only because they will be preserved and they will be available to anyone for learning and reflection and
education but also it's an absolutely first rate facility. The technical capability, the ability to display, the ability to
communicate in meaningful ways what's contained in this. I think my one of the things my father was struggling with is
how do you tell this story? How do you tell the story of the Fresno Assembly Center? He struggled. I remember him
sitting at his desk for hours at a time trying to figure out how to tell this story and that's, I'm confident, that's what will
happen.
>> Tammy Lau: So what do you think his legacy is? What do you think he would want his legacy to be?
>> Walter Pollock: I think that he-- First of all, I think he would want to have an appreciation of the importance of this
historic event. And I think if he knew that what happened at Fresno, how it happened, why it happened and what the
consequences were, what how it affected people's lives, how they dealt with it. If that were really available for people to
read and understand and reflect upon that's what he wanted to achieve. And I think having them in the Henry Madden
Library, you know, I think it would far surpass anything that he would think could be realized in writing a book because
I know he's struggling with okay so I write a book about this. Who will read it? Who will publish it? How will this
information be really available? So I think that's a legacy that he would want people to attribute to him. I think he
would-- The other thing I think he would want people to appreciate the people that were there and how they dealt with
it. I think that might be the most important part of the story to be told. And of course he's viewing this all from
somebody who is not interned there, can drive out the gates or walk out the gates every night. But he's also viewing it
from the standpoint of the person who was there with-- who was probably the most involved with the day to day lives of
the internees. He was the one who was-- He felt like he was trying to make life better and I think that's the important
part of the story for him.
>> Tammy Lau: Thank you.
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
head of special collections with Walter E. Pollock the third. So welcome and we'll begin our interview. Thank you for
agreeing to do this.
>> Walter Pollock: Great. Thank you.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us a little bit about your father, Walter Pollock?
>> Walter Pollock: Yes I can. Well, kind of, the demographic details are that he was born in 1908 and he was born in
Florida and he and his family moved from there to Chicago. And he had a number of brothers and sisters and eventually
the whole Pollock family moved to Southern California, which is, kind of, where the story of his involvement in Fresno
begins. And when he moved to Southern California this was when he was probably high school age and a little later on
he met the women who would become my mother in Los Angeles. She was going to UCLA and got a degree in Art and
they were married. And after they were married they moved to Bakersfield and the story leads from there to Fresno. So
that's, kind of, the early biographical summary.
>> Tammy Lau: Okay. Thank you. So how did he come to Fresno and how did he become the Director of Services at
the Fresno Assembly Center?
>> Walter Pollock: Well that story starts in Bakersfield and when they moved to Bakersfield my father did a number of
things for employment in Bakersfield. He built furniture for a while and he did some other things, worked in the oil
fields in those days for a while. Then he got a job with the Works Projects Administration who had constructed facilities
to house people who had come to California as part of the migration associated with the decibel. And I can't tell you all
the details of that but basically I think what the state did or what the federal government did and perhaps jointly was
they built areas where people could camp in effect, large camps for laborers and they provided facilities and services,
common facilities and services and things like athletic events and community activities and newsletters. So in a sense it
was an assemblage of people that required services and he was hired to help design and provide those. So he was very
much involved in, for example, newsletter publications and recreational activities in those decibel facilities. And as that
was, I believe he was still employed with them, the decisions were made with regard to the internment of Japanese
Americans as World War Two began. And the state director of the Works Project Administration in California asked my
father whether he would be willing to take on a job as services director in the Fresno Assembly Center. And at that time
he didn't know very much about what to expect or what he would find there, what it would involve but he agreed to do
it. That's how his presence here in Fresno at the Assembly Center came about.
>> Tammy Lau: Do you know what his job entailed?
>> Walter Pollock: I do. I know generally what it was. His part of it was for him to figure out when he got there. So as
you see as you look at his journals and some of his writings it was a bit of a voyage of discovery for him. But his
responsibility were basically to be sure that the necessary services were provided and that included everything from
facilities for sanitation to medical facilities to commissary or food services and also to things like recreation and
communications and newsletter publication inside the Assembly Center. But his basic job was to try to help make this as
good an experience for the people were interned as it could be and realizing that that whole project involved starting
from a very bad set of circumstances for these people. So that was his job. And when he showed up at the Fresno
Assembly Center he had to figure out how to do that. It was all-- at the time he arrived it was already had been
constructed so there had been some design work and construction work started. It wasn't complete but I think from the
day he arrived at the Assembly Center until the first internees arrived was a matter of weeks, just a few weeks.
>> Tammy Lau: How long was he there?
>> Walter Pollock: About six months was the duration. So he was there for the duration, although some of the
relationships lasted a lifetime and he-- And I know that he kept track of people that were at Fresno as they-- and I
believe most of them were transferred to Jerome Arkansas, so. So it was six months of his life but it had all kinds of
ramifications, some quite profound.
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
0
>> Tammy Lau: Thank you. So can you elaborate any more about the impact that this experience had on him?
>> Walter Pollock: Well I think that it was-- There were a lot of things that worked for him. One of them was he, like
everyone else in this country, was caught up with the surprise and the anxiety associated with the outbreak of war. So
there was a great deal of fear going on. And there was-- and I guess maybe this is a personal opinion but what happened
and the interning Japanese Americans was in a substantial measure driven by fear in this country. And so I think there
was that whole dynamic at work with him, that really he was always aware of and it was, kind of, a you had to be there
and live in that time to fully appreciate how difficult things were. But that intersected directly with the experiences he
had there with thousands of people who were somehow were making the best of it and had the-- And I can't say the
phrase in Japanese but there is a phrase that means it can't be helped, make the best of it. And I think he was profoundly
taken by that as well. So trying to reconcile the grace and the dignity that the people live their lives with the
circumstances was very difficult for him. But I think the goodness of the people that he got to know and shared six
months of his life with is a thing that, kind of, shined through for him.
>> Tammy Lau: So what do you think he really thought about the internment of Japanese Americans?
>> Walter Pollock: I think-- I don't think he had figured that out completely by the time he died. I think he was still
wrestling with that. In his heart of hearts he knew it was an awful mistake and one-- And I think that's part of his
motivation for keeping so many materials for so long. He kept everything. And I think that he believed that it was
important that people have the historic record of everything that happened and be able to learn from it in the future. And
whether he could have ever gotten himself to the conclusion that this was a horrible mistake and I don't know. I never
had that conversation with him. He was close to being there I think at the time that he died. But I think that was a-That's a really good questions. It's a difficult problem that I'm pretty clear in my mind but I'm viewing this from the
perspective of somebody that's lived a generation later.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us what he did save and what his collection entails?
>> Walter Pollock: Boy I would-- The biggest-- The way I'd probably summarize it is he saved everything that he could
and it ranged from a complete directory of everyone who was interned at Fresno. And it included even members of the
family, where they were from, in primarily California, to he saved all the newsletters that were ever published in the
camp. He saved all of the official directives and orders and, kind of, the institutional structure of the Assembly Center.
That is what were the orders, who was giving them, what did they say, what were internees prohibited from doing and
activities? So there was quite an inventory of rules and regulations and constraints and that kind of physical background.
He saved pieces that give glimpses into things that went on at the Assembly Center. He saved sheet music and he saved
the architectural drawings of the Fresno Assembly Center, which they-- And I-- This is one of these things when I've
had a chance to examine them in detail now I wish I had had the opportunity to ask him about it because it appears to
me that those drawings were done by someone who was intern at Fresno, by a skilled Japanese-American draftsman.
And it looks like they were architectural drawings that examined the potential for betterments at Fresno. It looks like
they were, the draftsman was trying to capture what had been built and what could be done to improve it because there
are things on it like new possible healthcare hospital facilities and a recreational facilities and I think some of those
might have been built in the Assembly Center. Some of them probably weren't and what I-- And other things I don't
know, for example, is was there any contemplation that internees would be kept longer than turned out they were in
Fresno. Maybe they were contingency plans for if Gerome Arkansas was not completed on the time table. So when I
look at this with and think about it I can think of a lot of questions I wish I'd asked but the drawings are magnificent.
They really are extremely skillfully done and they give a picture that of what the place was like. And also he-- My father
wrote some personal narratives. He wrote a narrative, which I find fascinating, about his impressions as he walked
around the Fresno Assembly Center for the first time and examined the status of construction, the buildings, the
facilities and I think what he was doing was realizing what an enormous task it was going to be to make this six months
livable for the people that were to be interned there. So. And there are many other materials he saved. He did a lot. He
was doing-- He was working on a book at the time he died so he'd been collecting every bit of materials from others he
could. He collected many books or papers that were written on internment and including both in the United States and in
Canada where there was a similar thing that occurred. So he-- There were quite a few research materials that he
collected. He tried very hard to find photographs of the Fresno Assembly Center and he did some made a lot of inquiries
file:///neo.lib.csufresno.edu/...cial%20Collections/Oral%20histories/Walter%20Pollock%20interview/Walter_Pollock_interview-corrected.txt[3/10/2022 1:52:23 PM]
of governmental agencies and others and that I can only guess that they just weren't allowed. Or perhaps they didn't
occur because that was the thing he wished that he could obtain. And apparently there were none available at the time. I
know if he had any he would have kept them. He also kept a painting that was given to him by a famous and extremely
skilled Japanese-American painter that was interned at Fresno, Henry Sugimoto.
>> Tammy Lau: Can you tell us a little bit more about that painting?
>> Walter Pollock: Yes. The painting is a-- I think it might be the only painted image of that Assembly Center. I've
looked at Henry Sugimoto's paintings that are in museums elsewhere and what it depicts is it's a scene that depicts the
buildings and some people that are outside the building performing tasks. It shows clothes hanging on a clothesline and
someone sitting what appears to be perhaps a loom and it captures, I think, what it felt like to be in that center. And I
think it might have been painted outside the building that Henry Sugimoto was interned in. And it-- These were not, for
those who aren't familiar with what these Assembly Centers were like on the inside, this was not individual homes for
people. This was a series of perhaps 20 or 30, kind of, long barn like structures. They were built on a fair grounds and
they were-- They accommodated multiple families with individual with only relatively thin partitions between
individual family units. There were no-- The toilet and bath facilities were not in the individual units. They were outside
in other buildings. So this painting, kind of, captures what it felt like to be in the Fresno Assembly Center and it-- Henry
Sugimoto was a wonderful and skilled artist. If you look at his other work he was a magnificent artist. He painted lots of
different forms and there are a number of his paintings that are on display in other museums. I understand the
Smithsonian owns three of them at this point.
>> Tammy Lau: So can you tell us why you decided to donate the collection to Fresno State and to this library?
>> Walter Pollock: Well there's probably about three parts of that. One of them is it was very clear to him that he
wanted these materials to be preserved for history. He didn't want them to be sold. He wanted, he believed-- He was-My father was worried that this would be forgotten. And he wanted them to be preserved and to have people to have
access to the information. So I guess the first criteria is we thought about, and we, our family has taken care of these
materials for 72 years. And so we had begun to think about where they belong. But our first criteria was they need to be
available to the public and for learning and education. Second was they need to be preserved and they need to be
preserved competently and professionally. Some of the materials are need to be probably digitalized or preserved in
ways that because they will eventually deteriorate. Newsletters that were probably 75 or 70 some years ago on not
particularly great quality paper are not going to last forever. And some are beginning to show some signs of
deterioration. And also they need to be in Fresno. There are others that have collections that relate to Japanese
Internment but this was about Fresno and they need to be here in Fresno. And the other consideration was as we-- I need
to tell you a little bit of the story as to how we, what led us to Fresno and to the Henry Madden Library because I didn't
know anything about the Henry Madden Library at the time that we were really thinking about finding a permanent
home for these materials. We live on Bainbridge Island in Washington state part of the time and for those who have
studied Japanese internment Bainbridge Island is a noteworthy place because the Japanese-Americans on that island
were evacuated by boat to the internment centers and Bainbridge Island is the setting for a famous, what's a novel but
it's a historic novel called Snow Falling on Cedars. The Island isn't named that in the book but it's a story about
Bainbridge. The island recently built a beautiful memorial to Japanese internment, which really it's built on the site
where families walked to the boat and it was designed by the same architect that did the Museum of the American
Indian in Washington D.C., The Smithsonian Museum on the mall and it is a spectacular memorial of Bainbridge Island.
But anyway my wife Louise and I visited that and we got to thinking that we were so touched by it when it opened we
thought I wonder if anyone has constructed a memorial in Fresno because we were thinking how do we find somebody
in Fresno that could help us with these, a disposition of these materials. Well low and behold, thank you for the internet,
we can go online and discover that yes indeed a memorial has been constructed. And the particular one we found was
for the Pinedale Assembly Center, which it was kind of unique. There were actually two in this geographic area. But at
the bottom of the item which I read about the Pinedale memorial it had a contact person and it gave a phone number. So
I made a call and left a message and said who I was and I was, kind of, you don't know me but you were good enough to
put your name and your phone number on the Pinedale memorial and I have all these materials and I wonder if you
could give me any thoughts about how they might be preserved and in Fresno. And sure enough I got a call back and
began to learn about what's already occurred here in Fresno. And it in those very early conversation it was pointed out to
me that the Henry Madden Library the special collections part of this activity is a wonderful place and has wonderful
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capabilities and actually was undertaking a program to try to preserve and protect and digitalize and make available
information of this kind. So it was a kind of a serendipitous thing that was that happened because I visited the memorial
on Bainbridge Island and looked on the internet and sure enough. So and then as I-- as we talked further and I talked
with you Tammy, we corresponded, I realized this was absolutely perfect. There was no better place for these materials.
And not only because they will be preserved and they will be available to anyone for learning and reflection and
education but also it's an absolutely first rate facility. The technical capability, the ability to display, the ability to
communicate in meaningful ways what's contained in this. I think my one of the things my father was struggling with is
how do you tell this story? How do you tell the story of the Fresno Assembly Center? He struggled. I remember him
sitting at his desk for hours at a time trying to figure out how to tell this story and that's, I'm confident, that's what will
happen.
>> Tammy Lau: So what do you think his legacy is? What do you think he would want his legacy to be?
>> Walter Pollock: I think that he-- First of all, I think he would want to have an appreciation of the importance of this
historic event. And I think if he knew that what happened at Fresno, how it happened, why it happened and what the
consequences were, what how it affected people's lives, how they dealt with it. If that were really available for people to
read and understand and reflect upon that's what he wanted to achieve. And I think having them in the Henry Madden
Library, you know, I think it would far surpass anything that he would think could be realized in writing a book because
I know he's struggling with okay so I write a book about this. Who will read it? Who will publish it? How will this
information be really available? So I think that's a legacy that he would want people to attribute to him. I think he
would-- The other thing I think he would want people to appreciate the people that were there and how they dealt with
it. I think that might be the most important part of the story to be told. And of course he's viewing this all from
somebody who is not interned there, can drive out the gates or walk out the gates every night. But he's also viewing it
from the standpoint of the person who was there with-- who was probably the most involved with the day to day lives of
the internees. He was the one who was-- He felt like he was trying to make life better and I think that's the important
part of the story for him.
>> Tammy Lau: Thank you.
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