Bui Doi Journals (demo)

EP 22 of the daily podcast, GET THE ROOM NOISE. Months ago, I discovered an interview from Karrie Coughlin with Wilbur Sato. This interview was marked as Public Domain so I decided to experiment with sound design and modified the interview in small creative snippets of audio. I called this project, Bui Doi Journals. Wilbur Sato spent his early childhood in San Pedro and Terminal Island. When ordered to leave Terminal Island, his family went to Boyle Heights before being sent to Manzanar. Just after arriving at Manzanar, Sato, a stamp collector who'd had to leave his albums behind, had a birthday. To celebrate, he recalled that: "œWell, my mother surprised me with a couple of stamps. I didn't know what to do with them. In the past, I would save stamps and I would admire them for their color and design and dream about the places where they came from all over the world. And you'd study places on the map and learn all the capitals and all that, but, gee, after that experience I just, I just couldn't do it anymore. Just because of that connection somehow." The family left Manzanar for Des Moines, Iowa. The transition was difficult; Sato recalled a fellow student punched him in the stomach. Shortly after that, the other students rallied around him. Sato and his family eventually returned to California. Of his Manzanar experiences, Sato said: "œThis alienation that you go through, that stays with you for the rest of your life. Even now you wonder, "Gee, am I a part of this? Are these really my friends?' You just wonder whether or not you're a part. But you just have to put that aside and assume that you are, and just participate." You can find the interview here: https://archive.org/details/cainmnh_000032 Music by Tung Nguyen. ------------- BLACK LIVES MATTER Support from the comfort of your own home: https://www.communityjusticeexchange.org/ From their website: "The Community Justice Exchange is a national hub for developing, sharing, and experimenting with tactical interventions, strategic organizing practices, and innovative organizing tools to end mass incarceration. We provide support to community-based organizations that are building a new vision of community justice through bottom-up interventions in the criminal legal and immigration detention systems."