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Q. What inspired you to write Camp Nine? A.

I would never have thought Id write a novel about this subject, but I think the adage write what you know is so true. The idea that became Camp Nine came out of a conversation with Valerie West, my professor of screenwriting at UCLA. I learned that one of her friends was interested in the Japanese American internment experience, and I off-handedly mentioned to Valerie that a Japanese American internment camp had been on my familys farm in Arkansas. Like most people, she was surprised to learn that there were camps in the Deep South. As our conversation progressed to include how my mother, an Italian American widow, became the keeper of memories of people who had been in the Arkansas camps, she insisted I needed to write a screenplay based on the story. I realized she was right the story was too remarkable not to be heard. But once I started on it, it became a novel rather than a film. Q. How much of Camp Nine is fiction, and how much is fact? A. I think most writers of historical fiction try to blend the facts in with the story. But I also believe that, sometimes, the truth is more completely understood through fiction than through the recitation of facts. It was important to me that I not distort the facts of what had occurred during this chapter in history, so I tried to be true to the real timeline of events, and I incorporated many real incidents into the fictional story. Some examples are the visit to the camp by the soldiers from Hawaii and the suicide of a resident by lying across the railroad tracks. Both of these incidents really spoke to me as important details of the Japanese American experience in Arkansas. I also wanted to include some facts about the beautiful art that came out of all of the camps, the kobu and the senninbari. On the other hand, Camp Nine is meant to be an expression of an idea the idea being that one can never know ones home until she sees it through the eyes of strangers. And that idea was so personal to me, I needed the freedom of creating an entirely new place, one that was similar to Rohwer, Arkansas, but wasnt really Rohwer, Arkansas. And the characters that tell this story may be similar in some ways, certainly in an amalgamated way, to people Ive known in my life, but they arent real people. They exist only on the page, and hopefully, if Ive done a good job with Camp Nine, they will exist vividly in the imaginations of the readers. And one constraint of fiction is that the writer must focus on characters and events that propel the story forward. So I wasnt able to create characters that represented all the wonderful people of the Delta only those that served the purpose of story, some good people and some bad people. Q. How much of the Chess Morton character is based on you? A. Actually, surprisingly little, although I, too, had a badly rendered pageboy haircut and a dark Mediterranean complexion, and I was a bit of a bookworm. My father died when I was a small child, and my mother was, and is, stunningly beautiful. We lived at Rohwer,

a tiny town of 86, and my grandparents lived next door to us. Both my grandfather and my mother were farmers. But there are so many differences. I was born in the late fifties, so I never knew rural wartime Arkansas. During my childhood, we had television and frozen dinners, the British invasion and the man on the moon and the Cold War. It was an exciting time to dream of the great future ahead for America. Speaking of the British invasion, I was crazy for all things British back in those days out at Rohwer, and later as a young teenager in McGehee. And one of the ironies I learned after I grew up is that the British musicians that I idolized were crazy for all things Delta. They borrowed heavily from the cultural influences of the very place where I had grown up. That was really fascinating to me after I had left the Delta, and it was the basis for the Willie Monroe storyline and for David Matsui having become a blues musician after having spent time in DeSoto County. Other ways in which Camp Nine differs from reality is that I was not an only child. I have two brothers, Clayton and Mitch Gould. And my grandmother, Grace Morton Gould, although she had a regal exterior and wore furs, was a wonderful woman who liked to hunt and play golf. I still have her fox stole and I wish I still had her to talk to. As in Camp Nine, our relationships with our African American neighbors were strictly dictated by custom, and the Civil Rights movement was just beginning. But it was peaceful, and although it took a long time, black people and white people in the Delta now interact as friends, neighbors and equals. Im so grateful to have lived during the time in which that change occurred it wouldnt have happened during the time Camp Nine takes place. The story Chess tells about going into the colored bathroom happened to me in Gould, Arkansas when I was about five years old. I will never forget it. Oh, and Carrie Morton was the name of my paternal great grandmother. I never met her, but I understand she was a firecracker. It was in Carrie Mortons house in Rohwer that we lived. I still have her portrait. Q. Why did you begin and end the story in 1965? A. By the 1960s, the past that had been the Rohwer relocation experience, for those of us left in Desha County, Arkansas, was so distant as to not be remembered at all. But for those Japanese Americans who had had their lives destroyed by relocation, it was still a fresh and painful wound that in some cases never healed. We tend to think of the experience as lasting for three years, between 1942, when the Japanese Americans were forcibly removed from their homes on the West Coast, and 1945, when the camps closed. Just looking at a timeline can be misleading that way. But the truth is that, while America moved on and steamed ahead into the optimistic fifties and sixties, many of the people who had suffered through relocation struggled to go on with their lives. Some Japanese Americans have expressed that they believe the experience changed the Japanese American community forever. I wanted to show that, while everyone else forgot, some

people lived on with the scars of the injustice. And although its widely known that the 442nd Regimental Combat Team was the most highly decorated U.S. military unit of its size in World War II, only one member of the 442nd had been awarded the Medal of Honor before that injustice was righted in the 1990s. Q. Is there really a cemetery? A. Yes there is, and it must be seen to be believed. Except for the newer monuments placed there years later, all of the monuments were handmade by the Japanese Americans. But the story behind how it came to be is apparently lost to the ages, although I am trying to find it out. If you know anyone who thinks they know, please get in touch with me! Q. Is there anywhere I can get more information on the Japanese American internment experience? A. Absolutely. There are many wonderful sites with factual information, photographs, and interviews. There are also great scholarly and fictional works about the subject.

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