Amy Iwasaki Mass, PhD. Oral History Interview

Oral History Interview by Ken Verdoia with Amy Iwasaki Mass, PhD. Doctor Mass is a clinical social worker who has worked with ethnic Japanese to address emotional issues attendant to relocation. She presently maintains a private practice as well as serving as an instructor at Whittier College, in Whittier, California. A young resident of Los Angeles at the outbreak of the war, she was relocated with her family to the Heart Mountain relocation Camp in Wyoming.

AM~ · l~a.~~~ ~~l~ TOPAZ INTERVIEWS Dr. Mass Ken Q,l~JJ. ~ \ ~~ (_i2e\.~'2d) Now, okay, Dr. Mass, let's, I'd like to begin with the societal situation facing Japanese-Americans prior to the outbreak of the war. It seems that the west coast, the west coast caucasian had established a pattern for domination of Japanese-Americans in many senses. From your position, your consideration, did this domination affect the self image of the Japanese-Americans even before the outbreak of hostilities. • • JP Dr. Mass I would think so, uh, let me preface my comments. I probably will be speaking at two levels. One, I'll be speaking at a personal level as, um, a JapaneseAmerican who was in the concentration camps, and from that perspective I'll be speaking from somebody who was 6 ytars old at the time of outbreak of World War II, and so my understanding of what was going on would be really from a very limited point of view. Then, the other level at which I'll be speaking will be that as, um, a researcher who as an adult has looked into this in a in a broader sense, but in retrospect certainly historically there's evidence that Japanese were dominated, uh, it did affect their self image. Uh, people who Dr. Mass/Page 2 got their training in universities and had degrees and professions were not able to practice their work, uh, tr.ere were no Japanese-American school teachers in the public school system, which seems really wild new bec~use there are so many, uh, Japanese-Americans who do become school teachers and and they're so much in the limelight. When when a person grows up with aspirations and goals as we did in America, um, hearing about Am-America as a land of opportunity and a place where, depending on our effort we could go as far as we we w&nted to. I think it's very damaging to one's sense of self esteem when one goes through the steps that, that, um, one is supposed to to find that you cannot get a job, to find that you are not accepted, to find that the opportunities are not there for you. Ken Was the American, dream, for the Japanese-Arnerthe typical Japanese-American in pre-war United States little more than a golden object beyond reach? Dr. Mass Um, maybe in a very objective sense that would be true. Let me speak now from the subjective sense, from the perEonal kind of experience. In my family as I grew up and, amongst friends of ours I think we still believe that, uh, America was the land of opportunity, even though we we we did not have Dr. Mass/Page 3 access to as many open doors as the rest of the population. From tte point of view of children of immigrant parents who had very little, uh who had very little in Japan, who had very little when they came here, um, we were able to get so much more. We were able to, um, participate in the schools, we were able to get college educations, so we were able to have families and to live more comfortably than our our parents did, so I think in that sense from a subjective point of view, we still had the dream, it still seemed real to us in in in many ways. Ken Uh, I'd like to consider what what seems almost the untenable nature of the Japanese-American a t the outbreak of the war, uh, because the way it seems is the Japanese-American was not necess~rily considered Japanese by the Japanese, and the JapaneseAmerican was not considered American by the Caucasian. Dr. Mass Right. Ken Did that, in fact, isolate them from perhaps what we might consider necessary support in a grander sense in a community? Were they isolated? Were they left to themselves because of who they were, were they in fact isolated in American society? Dr. Mass/Page 4 Dr. Mass Um, to a degree, but again I ' m gonna qualify this. Um, my my responses to this question probably have to do with seeing what happened to m1 brothers and sisters. There's a a large age gap between me and them, uh , they were, my brother who's just above me 1. s 1.S 1. 10 years older than me. My oldest sister s 15 years older than I am. When I, when you ask question I think of their lives in high school. I don't think they felt isolated. They were active in the schools, they were in student government, they were recognized for their academic achievements I think they felt very good about themselves and very good about being American. There was, however, just a a very clear understanding that as far as socializing, as far as dating, as far as marriage and as far as your activities outside of school that was with your Japanese-American friends. again I think this did not maybe And rate in the sense of feeling isolated because the Japanese family is very tight, and our parents did not want us to marry outside of our race. Our parents wanted us to have Japanese friends, so it seemed, uh, maybe not so much a, um, matter of being isolated and rejustify American society but that it, within the Japanese community we were seeking, we were choosing to be with Japanese people, Japanese-Americans. • Dr. Mass/Page 5 Ken In your article one of the interesting points you bring out is that in many cases a dominated group will assume tte characteristics of the group that is dominating it. Dr. Mass Uh-huh. Ken How did that translate for Japanese-Americans? Dr. Mass Um, it it we were very patriotic. America was a great country. We thought that We believe that wbat the government was doing at the time of of this incarceration was really for our good and for the good of this country, and we were sacrificing. Everybody had to sacrifice during the war. We really took on the mentality of · the government, and I remember as a little girl thinking President Roosevelt was just the most wonderful man in the whole world. He was so wise; he was so strong; he was guiding us. So, we did take on, I think, uh, the attitudes, uh, the values, the whatever it was that was being said in in terms of official government policy. Um, Ken As a means to achieve what end? Dr. Mass To prove that we were Americans, to prove prove Dr. Mass/Page 6 that we are indeed, urn, a part of this country. Ken You mentioned Franklin Roosevelt, and that's one thing we've come across, y'know, our research in Topaz, uh, the day President Roosevelt died there was an incredible outpouring of emotion, uh, uh, a rather substantial, uh, uh, service in his honor, in a very large auditorium in Topaz, yet this is the president who signed the executive order 9066 who with one signature dispossessed, if you will, 110 to 120,000 Japanese-Americans. How can such a significant wrong be turned away from, a-as we see there was no overt protest, uh, the the orders were followed to the letter, including the personal sacrifice of large numbers of possessions. And yet everyone we've talked to seems to acknowledge they knew it was a substantial wrong at the time. Dr. Mass · Um-hum. I think it's a split that we do in terms of our psyche. There's a there's, urn, a part of us that can recognize this isn't right. We're not criminals; we didn't do anything wrong; we shouldn't be put away. But then there's this other part of us that really wants so much to go along to believe that what the government is doing is right, that somehow they have a greater wisdom than we do. I think the other thing about Japanese in terms Dr. Mass/Page 7 of our our cultural history is that the Japanese, the Isai who came to America grew up in a country where authority was followed, where one assumed that whoever was in charge, that the emperor, um, was was wise. Parents were wise and right and, uh, they knew something that children didn't and so even though we didn't like the idea they they probably were wiser than we were, we went along with them. So I think that explains part of why there is this dicotomy, although on on on wh- maybe on an intellectual level we can say this is terrible, it's not right, they shouldn't be doing that to us. A tremendous part of our value system, our our behavior, the way we react to orders, to directives, is one of compliance and is one of obedience and and, um, acceptance. Was there one demographic group within the Japanese- Ken American community that perhaps sustained the the most adverse impact as a result of relocation? Dr. Mass I think it would be hard to point out one group. I think people experienced adversity in a a variety of ways. I think of the Isai men who came and spent many years struggling to build, urn, their financial resources so they could take care of their families, uh, they could provide for their children to go Dr. Mass/Page 8 higher education. They could have some comfort in their o- old age. All during this time they were also sending money back to Japan, um, so for the Isai men who were in their 40's, S0's, some in their 60's, to have all this wiped out at this point in their lives was really very hard, because economically they came back to nothing. And they were really far el-, uh, enough along in terms of their years that they really could not build again as if they were 20 or 30, so that was hard for them. I think there were other ·groups, though, for whom the, um, evac- inceration was really very hard, • and I I have to switch from relocation to incarceration because going along with the government's idea of relocation or evacuation, uh, those word in themselves are are really not too negative, relocate means, y'know, you put somebody some people, group of people from one place to another. might be very positive. The reasons Evacuation would be what you do when your, say, in a natural disaster and people are trying to save you from from this disaster. Um, some of the writers in the community have pointed out how these words lull us into that sense of, this is really okay, and we really need to remember to call it an incarceration or an imprisonment or a concentration c~mp rather than relocation camp. ) But, getting back to, uh, the question of groups • Dr. Mass/Page 9 that were affected, the early, I think the the teenagers and the young adults must have been very severely affected from a psychological point of view because this is a time when one is really working on identity issues . and striving and hoping for success in the future. It was a terrible blow, psychologically, I think, to teenagers and young adults to recognize that the U.S. gover_n men t did not see us as Americans. They saw us as Japanese, and I think that was really that that must have been a tremendous blow, um, a lot of p-, but then we did a strange thing during this whole process, the same kind of thing that allowed us to to mourn and really feel bad when Roosevelt died. We ·were so identified with the position of the government that we didn't even we couldn't even acknowledge to ourselves how badly we fe 1 t. Um, I had an interesting experience, the first time I gave a presentation at a professional organization meeting about the camps and how it affected Japanese-Americans, and I used myself as an example. A woman who was maybe 12 years older than I, Japanese-American, came up to me and said, I'm sorry i t was so hard for you, you were at such a tender, vulnerable age. Now as a chronician, as a professional in this field I recognize it must have been much harder for her than for me, but she -. J had denied it; she had repressed it all. She wasn't Dr. Mass/Page 10 even aware of how it affected her. But when I think in in the broader sense I look at the generation that grew up in the camps when they were teenagers. I think they they there're scars. I think their need to achieve, to belong, to fit in, to not make waves, uh, to go along with things are all expressions of this need to deny how painful, how terrible that whole experience was. Ken You've already spoken of numerous defense mechanisms including the repression that was used, uh, to deal with the reality of what was being done to JapaneseAmericans. uh, Let's consider the defense mechanisms a little bit further, how could someone defend against the reality of what was happening, the reality of losing a home, the reality of, for some, losing work, being relocated, ending up, if you will, 650 miles away from their homes in the middle of the Utah desert surrounded by barbed wire with guards who were pointing their weapons in, not out. can someone deal with that? How How, what mechanisms are are possible to be developed? Dr. Mass Um, maybe your question is is asking how could we deny the reality, is that, uh, how, it it was so real, it was so obvious, how could we deny how terrible that was? I think that human beings have a Dr. Mass/Page 11 greater need to protect their own sense of dignity or integrity, uh, than to face reality. And when we become so threatened that our sense of well-being is is really cut out from under us, we have to find ways to manage to stay together, to feel okay. Um, the Japanese have a tremendous, uh, training about honor and, uh, that we need to behave in such a way, we need to be seen as honorable people. For us to admit that we were the enemy, that the government hated us, that we were not wanted, that's a terrible blow to our own self image, and I think it was just impossible for many of us to recognize • that. We had to rationalize it. We had to, we bought into the the kinds of explanation the government was giving. This was really for our protection um, we were sacrificing, we were p1·oving our loyalty, um, we we, if we stayed with the anger, if we stayed with the tte · disillusionment, if we stayed with the pain it would have been too much for us. In fact, I remember when I was in my early, late 20's, early 30's when _I first started to go to meetings about camp, it amazed me that there were a few people who who were angry all through the whole experience of the the internment because most of the people that I knew weren't. Most of the people that I knew went through it just kind of, well that's how ) life is and that's what we do. And I I would ask Dr. Mass/Page 12 them well, what why did you, why were you angry , how could be? Uh, it's almost like, y'know, we're trained as Japanese-American children that anger is bad, that rebellion against authority is bad, uh, so we went along with it, and I never did find out why some people were able to be aware of the reality and respond to it in in terms of reality when so many of us just denied it. Ken But, wasn't anger if if it did exist, wasn't it dealt with sunnnarily, quickly and certainly in that i-if someone spoke out and said, for example, uh, the military now says Nisai are welcome to join • the Armed Services, the Army. what they've done to us? Why should we after Anyone makes an utterance like that, they find themselves in a citizen's isolation unit. If they were to put up something on the wall saying the same thing, they would find themselves well on their way to Tooly Lake, uh, obviously the punishment was there and they'd seen many friends who had chosen the alternate route, and it was of innnediate consequences. Dr. Mass Yes, that's true. That's true. So that would be that would, of course, explain the, another reason for the denial, for the going along, for the the ) rationalizing. Dr. Mass/Page 13 Ken If America, here's another question which which is gonna cause you to repeat a little bit of what you've already said, if America was so hostile to the Japanese-Americans prior to the war, certainly during the war, why would Japanese-Americans make such a concerted effort to be accepted by people who were so hostile? Dr. Mass Um, that's a complicated, the answer to that would be complicated, I think~ Um, we wanted to belong. ·There were certain messages in American society that said we could belong, that all of us were immi- • all Americans were immigrants except for the native Americans, and we all looked towards being part of this melting pot. So there were certain messages that allowed us to to do that. Um, lost my train of thought there in terms of, wh-, given given the hostility, why did we want to, why did we go ahead and and want to belong? Oh, the other thing is (Change tapes) Dr. Mass • • • I I need to think about because, again, responding from a personal point of view, what happened was I was going, uh, um, that's how life was the you just accepted it, and it just never occurred to me that my parents had Now, as an Dr. Mass/Page 14 • adult and looking back I can see, well maybe they did. I think that for the people, the Isais who came from Japan, getting settled, if they were successful, if they were making it, if they had found friends, um, was hard enough. The idea of moving again, uh, seemed overwhelming. We were given a choice before the mass evacuation to move on to other parts of the country if we wanted ot. The Isai, many of the Isai did not speak English. The idea, again, of going to a strange place, establishing a business again, uh, taking your children with you because now you had lots of children compared to when you • came as a single young man, I think that must have seemed overwhelming. And it's a very limited answer because it's a question I hadn't really considered before. Ken Let's let's consider since I I introduced this subject of loyalty, let's consider the actual event of questioning loyalty which went on in every camp, now given you were too young as a 6 or 7 year old to appreciate perhaps some of the the nature of discussions in your own family, your own camp at Hard Mountain. As a psychologist, as you look at the loyalty questions, questions 27 and 28, the way they were administered and the potential different ways they could have been answered, was it, did Dr. Mass/Page 15 it present a very unique challenge, a very difficult challenge to families made up of Isai and Nisai. Dr. Mass Yes, it did. Let me correct a couple of things. I'm a clinical social worker, not a psychologist. Ken Oh, okay, I'm sorry. Dr. Mass Just just for information sake, um, as a 6 as a 7 year old, maybe 8 year old by the time the loyalty, uh, questions came up, I have certain memories of what happened in our camp and among our friends • and those particular questions. It, they were questions that indeed tore apart many families and tore apart friends. My father was very clear in our family that, uh, my brothers were Americans, that that his children were Americans and they should do what would support the American government. His best friend, on the other hand, felt very offended by the whole thing and encouraged his sons to resist those questions and so they ended up going to a federal ten- penitentiary. Uh, my aunt had a brother, and he was really torn about which he should be, and there were facts in some parts of the families which were encouraging one thing and other parts of the family who were not, and it made for a lot of of hostility and tension and bitterness within Dr. Mass/Page 16 that particular family trying to decide which way the young men should go. You might note that I'm talking a lot about Nisai in this ·position not making individual decisions on their own. deed family decisions. These were in- They were these were decisions that affected friendships, community when standing with other people, um, so that a man in his late teens, early 20's was not really free to just decide I want to do such and such. He had to take into into account all of these other points of view. Ken • Was there at that period of time a need to to find a tangible expression of loyalty, outside of putting the the sign on the shop that said I am an American or wearing the lapel pin that said, I love America. Was there a need for tangible expressions? Dr. Mass I, very definitely so, and I think that joining the army was one very clear was of saying I am a loyal American and, um, the other source of pride was during the war, I guess you wouldn't remember this, but people hung flags in their windows, and if you h- there were the number of stars you had on the flag represented how many sons you had in the service. If the stars were gold, it meant how many sons died in service. So Japanese mothers, Dr. Mass/Page 17 Isai mothers, would have flags in their houses if they had sons g- in the service, so even within the camp there was a need to show, and who was there to show, uh, each other, President Roosevelt was going to come and see us, but, what, whoever this sense of loyalty, this sense of commitment to the c- to the, um, country. I I was thinking back to that other question you you posed about giving the hostility, the injustice, why do people go along with it? I think a lot of it had to do from a psy- chological point of view with our sense,~ very • strong sense of being American. Being American we could not oppose the country. Now I I think it really wasn't until Watergate that the general public could question the actions of the government. There was there has been for many years in America a tradition of patriotism and loyalty and unquestioning loyalty. Um, the 60's really brought about a very big change in the way we looked at our government and so when this happened in the 40's JapaneseAmericans were part of that unquestioning, loyal patriotic group. Ken We talked with a number of people who said that leaving the camps at the very end became extremely difficult for many who had stayed throughout the war. It was tough to return to a, quote, unquote, Dr. Mass/Page 18 normal lifestyle, especially given the fact that many of those left in the camp were either elderly or those with very large families. Uh, do you find that understandable? Dr. Mass Yes, I think so. I, for me it's understandable from a professional point of view. Urn, any group of people that's institutionalized, whether they're put into hospitals, mental hospitals, into prisons, into, uh, any kind of, uh, uh, residential kind of a a treatment center where your needs are taken care of, uh, your meals are planned for you, your activities are planned for you. by somebody else in power(?). Your life is planned It's very easy to become dependent on those rules, and going leaving camp and going out to a probably still hostile world is very frightening. Urn, it's easier to to remain where, urn, you know where your next meal is corning from. You know who your neighbors are and at least they won't, you may not get along with them, but they won't be against you because of your race. Urn, there's a certain security in that, then it's, whenever you put people into an institutional setting, into a setting where they're being taken care of by a by a more powerful source, you get this regression and this dependency. A friend of mine, uh, was very active in the movement to get college- Dr. Mass/Page 19 aged students out from the camps into universities and colleges in the midwest and the east coast. And, she spoke of a time in in their process when they recognized they really had to work extra hard, because after being in the camps for 2 or 3 years the houth were becoming used to it. They were start- ing to see that this was the only way, and it was just easier to go along with that. They'd lost their discomfort with being instutionalized. was comfortable. It They had they had lost their ini- tiative and hopes and awareness of what was outside there. And I remember, uh, example that he gave me of older siblings who had gone out really feeling they had to get back to the camps and and rescue their younger brothers and sisters because they they were becoming too set in terms of the camp mentality. Ken Uh, I'm gonna offer a couple of statements which are fairly outrageous, and then I'm sure you're gonna want to respond, uh, quite directly to them. However, these have been passed on to me by annumber of people, primarily, uh, caucasian people in Utah. In retrospect, wasn't World War II and the relocation a significantly positive era for reordering the opportunities and rights of JapaneseAmericans in this country, and much of what passed Dr. Ma Ls/Page 20 during from that erea, era, for the Japanese-Americans has prosen proven to be very positive in the long run, in terms of opening up careers, educational opportunities, World War II was the watershed from whence things got better. Dr. Mass Um, I should really have a a prepared speech on that 'cause I've heard it many times before. Well I would disagree totally with that concept. Um, it it ignores the, speaking of reality, it ignores the reality and the tragedy of the situation (phone rings--pause for it) . • Ken 'Kay, you ready to give it a shot now? The best thing to ever happen to the Japanese-Americans because it started the era of real opportunities for them in the post-war period. Dr. Mass - Okay, I think that's totally r- wrong and erroneous. It's based on all kind of false assumptions. Um, was not the best thing that happened to us because as I talked earlier I mentioned the tremendous, uh, damage to self esteem and psychological health that this whole whole issue brought up for JapaneseAmericans. It was also bad, not just for the Japanese- Americans but for the whole country, and we JapaneseAmericans see, Americans it was bad in the sense of of actually ignoring civil rights, absolutely Dr. Mass/Page 21 ignoring the rights of American citizens as stated in the Constitution. Um, I think another underlying assumption in a statement like that is JapaneseAmericans aren ' t American. We are Japanese, and as Japanese it opened up new possibilities for us to participate more in American society. We should have been participating all along, but America as a racist society doesn't happen that way. don't think that it it's not necessary. Um, I It wouldn't it should not have been necessary that we ben incarcerated in order for us to then come out differently and and have a different kind of life afterwards. It's a good ques- it's a good statement because it leaves be flabbergasted in so many ways. Ken And the the Japanese-American connnunity, uh, has been referred to by many of the people we've talked to they they say that they're the community of of Japanese-Americans and specifically San Fracisco, for example, was particularly sustaining in the pre-war period in the sense of community inside the camps was sustaining because people did try to help out each other and there was this sustaining spirit that was built up on on relationships. How did the essence of community change in in the post war period after relocation. Were all bets off? Was the concept of Japanese-American connnunity Dr. Mass/Page 22 completely rewritten. Dr. Mass Not completely rewritten. I think there is a strong bond amongst, within the Japanese-American community that continued before, through and afterwards. Um, it was more scattered afterwards. Uh, it was not just centered around Japanese town. Uh, a lot of the communities that that Japanese-Americans then resettled in were I I I should talk about the Los Angeles community because that's the one that I'm familiar with, we scattered into many different areas so there's not been one sense of conrrnunity • since then, to, I mean as as the years have gone by people have moved away from that as they become more affluent into other affluent suburbs. So there just really hasn't been this kind of sustaining of of conrrnunity in the same kind of way, good and bad to that. I think that, though, that it wasn't completely, um, demolished because, as I said, there is a strong bond and even though people had scattered in different ways there are still, uh, type picnics(?). These are picnics of the pre that the people came from in Japan. ---- There's still certain church groups, and people will drive for miles to go back to their church group. Um, very strong part of the Japanese-American community is the militant, uh, social activists that came up Dr. Mass/Page 23 in the s- in the late 60's, early 70's. These are made up of of third and fourth generation JapaneseAmericans. So, community continues but in a differ- ent form. Uh, I don't think the the experience destroyed community as much as it destroyed families. I think maybe the the, um, the the negative consequences of the camps in terms of breaking apart a social unit had more to do with with families. Some families survived, but many families didn't. Um, I I did a research project at UCLA a few years ago and in the process of my research certain things came up about the camps, too, because the kind of people I was talking to were people who were teenagers when they were in camps, and I remember one young man who said, before the war pop was the head of the family and we had to do what he said no matter what. And then we were in camps, and I knew he wasn't he wasn't strong anymore. unquestioned authority. He wasn't Some other authority took away his powers, um, we had to live in the little room, uh, the kids stopped ing up to him. him and look- Uh, we went off and ate with our friends instead of together as a group. I think that kind of experience is not uncommon and, indeed, um, tore up many families. And I I think that there was more damage in terms of family, see, than than communit- community because community, I think, has survived but maybe in different terms. Dr. Mass/Page 24 Ken The the final questions that I had prepared calls on you to respond in, uh, not exclusively as a a first person participant or as a clinical social worker, perhaps combining the two. If there is a lesson, if you if you could have a lesson learned from a war relocation experience, a lesson that all Americans should learn, must learn of the relocation experience, what would you hope that lesson might be that would be learned? Dr. Mass I guess what I feel is most important is that the lesson be how fragile our freedom is, and how tenta- • tive our rights are. Uh, we've grown up in America being taught through our schools about the rights in inalienable rights of American citizens. Uh, you can lose them very easily ., public opinion, um, mob hysteria, um, economic circumstances, political circumstances can just wipe out these things for masses of people, and we, the lesson is that we shouldn't be complacent, that we should always be on guard and ever vigilant and room to fight in a way that we weren't during World War II. Ken Okay, that that ends my questions, but I guess one thing I'd like to do is, I always kind of try to protect myself at the end of an interview, what didn't we discuss that's important to you? Have Dr. Mass/Page 2 5 I overlooked something? ) Dr. Mass I I guess I would like to talk a little bit more about the psychological need for Japanese-Americans to protect themselves in terms of this experience in that we mentioned, you mentioned we were talking earlier about how many people couldn't think of what was so awful and traumatic about camp. Um, I'd like to speak to that because I think people often interpret that kind of response as, well gee then maybe camp really wasn't that bad. Indeed people don't give evidence of how terrible it was. • And and and our third generation, fourth generation young people, Japanese-Americans say, y'know, why aren't you mad? Why don't you get upset. Um, it has to do, the reason why people kind of play it down, don't think of the awful part, talk about the awful part, has to do again with the psychowith the psychological defense mechanisms of repression and denial. It's like, uh, going to a rape victim and asking her to talk about how awful it was--what did he do to you? he did that? How did you feel when Uh, isn't that terrible, what do you want to do about it? Why do you, why won't you talk about it more, y'know, why don't you act, why do you act as if nothing happened? Uh, if you could put hours- or a child abuse victim, um, when something Dr. Mass/Page 26 that awful happens to you and it and it hurts and hits at a very deep personal level, you don't want to be talking about it all the time, and since it happened to so many of us there was this massive denial, I think. It was almost like, in fact when I first started to talk about this, I would feel guilty and like I was betraying other JapaneseAmericans and like, y'know, I could maybe almost hear my mother or my neighbor or somebody saying, shh, don't don't talk about things like that. not supposed to talk about what hurts. You're You're supposed to present yourself as strong and and adaptive and, • urn, kind of persevering and stoic. Don't don't don't let people know those things. That's like bearing, y'know, your showing your dirty linen in public, so I I I have very strong feelings about this. On the one hand people who don't understand why people can be so passive or accormnodating or accepting. I would like those people who don't understand to see that the need is great, it's almost like the more one has to cover that up, the more vulnerable one feels, and and isn't able to really acknowledge what's going on. That would be the main area, I guess, that I'd want to attack(?). Ken Okay.