Nebraska museum director tells the stories of others

GERING, Neb. (AP) - As Sandra Reddish sits down in her office at the Legacy of the Plains museum in Gering, she wonders aloud why anyone is interested in her. She has spent several years interviewing others, in particular the descendants of the “Issei,” the first Japanese immigrants in Nebraska. She is also the executive director of the museum and has overseen a major overhaul to modernize it. Any conversation with Reddish is likely to be a passionate one. And it will always detract from her personal history.

Reddish was raised on a farm outside of Lincoln. She came of age in the 1970s during the women’s movement when women were working in nontraditional fields. She knew she was going to join the military and thought about joining the Navy. After visiting the recruiter’s office and doing some research, she joined the Marines.

“It was the toughest service and less than 10 percent were women,” Reddish said. “I thought it would be an ultimate challenge.”

She thought about becoming a drill instructor. As a drill instructor, she could tell people what to do. If she became a recruiter, she’d have quotas and she knew she was not a salesman.

“Then, my dad got cancer,” Reddish said.

Reddish believed she could make something of herself outside of the military and decided to return to college to further her education. She attended Southeast Community College in Milford and was hired by Boeing Commercial Airplane Group to work in their plant in Wichita. Reddish lived in Wichita for 12 years.

In the fall of 2003, Reddish was also studying at Kansas State University.

“I was meeting with my professor and he said, ’Reddish. Did you know there’s Japanese in Nebraska?’” she said.

Reddish claims she was not a good graduate student because as soon as she heard about the Japanese in western Nebraska and they’d been there for more than 100 years, she was focused on them, not her school work.

“I like road tripping. That’s why I wasn’t a good grad student,” she said. “If I hear a good story, I’m off in a minute.”

She began researching, but found there was little to no information on the Japanese community, even at the State Historical Society. She was determined to find out more.

“They are a small, minority group,” she said. “There’s this wealth of information of living history and nobody interviewed them.”

The descendants live scattered throughout the Panhandle and aren’t concentrated in one area like the Czechs in Wilbur, the Star-Herald (https://bit.ly/2o2n9TX ) reported.

She contacted Tom Miles, former Episcopal priest in Mitchell, where many Japanese settled. It was the only piece of information she had to go on. He told her about the Japanese in the valley and sent an email introduction for her to Cindy Yamamoto.

Soon, the Yamamoto family was putting Reddish up in their basement so she could gather stories.

“It was a good eight hour drive (from Kansas) and I had to stay over,” she said. “I took my little tapes and people told me fantastic stories.”

In Scottsbluff, she learned about and visited the Japanese corner in Fairview cemetery.

When she returned to Manhattan, Kansas, her professor asked about her dissertation on the Japanese people.

“I said ’No, my dissertation topic is with World War I,” she said. “So I came back (to Nebraska) in October 2004 with a tape recorder and started doing interviews.”

Any free time she had was spent in western Nebraska gathering stories. Even with the history Reddish has gathered, she knows there are still more stories the Japanese in Nebraska are reluctant to share. She still continues her interviews because she feels compelled to tell their stories. She knows if she doesn’t ask the questions, they may never tell their stories.

Reddish doesn’t see herself as the only person who can tell the Japanese story, but she understands the importance of documenting history for future generations.

“I just want the information out there,” she said. “Hopefully, it will trigger more people into the research.”

Eventually, her research turned into a conference paper, which led to the short documentary, “The Invisible People,” about Japanese immigrants in Nebraska for NET Television’s “Nebraska Stories.”

As she speaks about the documentary, her allergies kick in. She apologizes several times, but remembers they aren’t as bad today as they were when she was speaking the narration for the documentary.

At the time, she was living in Lincoln and visited the studio to record voice overs and narration. She learned how to stand up straight, create a rhythm in her speech and speak slower. It’s important to have a consistent voice throughout the documentary, but her allergies changed her voice just enough she had to return another day to re-record the audio.

Reddish shifts gears once again and speaks of her desire to always be learning. She visits museums large and small whenever she can.

“There are all these places and nobody utilizes them,” she said. “They will give you access and you can start going through everything.”

But she also visits them with a critical eye.

“If I can learn one fascinating fact, then this is an OK museum,” she said.

She is inspired by the people who have gone before her and amazed by others who have always known what they wanted to do with their lives. It’s one reason she admires Winston Churchill.

“I know he was a war monger and I understand his flaws,” she said. “But he had such a sense of his own destiny.”

Reddish is also fascinated by World War I. In particular, she is interested in the transitions of world power, and how that set into motion events that are occurring today.

Her deep need to always be learning has led Reddish to pick up information on a variety of topics. When she was in the Marines and stationed in bluegrass country, she bought a cheap banjo and took lessons.

Although she never took formal lessons, she can also play the fiddle and mandolin.

“I’m not a great player,” she said. “But I dabble in bluegrass.”

With more than 120 oral histories under her belt, Reddish is happiest when she’s interviewing other people.

“If I could get paid to travel around and tell people’s stories, I would,” she said. “I’m always surprised at how much people are willing to tell you.”

Her first oral history was on women engineers. While working at Boeing, she conducted nine interviews. To her credit, a special collection on women engineers was named after her at Wichita State University.

Reddish has a knack for knowing the right questions to ask and explaining why each story is important.

“With history, you have to be intuitive,” she said. “You have to know as you’re looking through stuff, ’Wait a minute. Something doesn’t seem right.’ You have to trust your instincts.”

A couple from Florida once gave her some items from an uncle who was in the military. As Reddish looked through the items, she noticed a scrapbook contained several business cards with women on them. They seemed out of place, so she asked about the uncle. After a quick look online, she called the San Francisco Historical Society. The cards had women’s names on them, but only one had an address. She was given the number to the public library, which requested she scan and send them for identification.

“They were business cards for prostitutes,” Reddish said.

History is nothing but cold cases, she said. As she pours over facts and data, looks at trends and views receipts, Reddish notices when something is different, out of place. Her critical thinking skills and creativity are necessary to see what the documents are telling her. It’s a passion of hers, but when she has the chance, she will be on the road, telling someone else’s story.

“I enjoy hearing people’s stories and they need to get out and get exposure,” she said.

Reddish thrives in documenting the stories of others.

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Information from: Star-Herald, https://www.starherald.com