Episode Forty-Eight: The Byte-Joel Nakamura
Joel has had experiences that some (including me!) would covet. Find out what (and who!) he's seen in the woods in this shorter episode, and why those experiences have changed him. For lovers and speculators of mysteries in our great forests.
Transcript
Well,
They met,
You know,
They both had to be in camps as teenagers in the concentration camps and then my dad volunteered to be in the 442nd,
Which was a battle battalion for the U.
S.
Army made up of Japanese Americans.
And so they were the highest decorated battalion ever in U.
S.
Army history.
And so what they did was,
You know,
They unleashed these angry Japanese men on the poor Italians.
They sent them on every suicide mission is what they did and they succeeded.
I grew up in Whittier,
California,
The hometown of Richard Milhouse Nixon.
Right after his resignation,
Like all the Nixon postcards like disappeared out of drug stores and stuff.
We were going to have a street,
They were going to rename it Nixon Avenue and then that got nixed,
You know.
It was kind of our claim to shame.
I grew up mainly Christian and we'd go to church and Sunday school and stuff and I learned about all these different stories.
And my parents were both in concentration camps,
You know,
In World War II.
And so they wanted us to emulate and be American,
You know,
And not speak Japanese and do too many things that would alienate us because we were,
That was one of very few Asian people in Whittier at the time.
Now there are many.
You know,
I had to like fight every Pearl Harbor day and stuff.
So it was bad enough already,
But not anything like the prejudice my parents had to face.
So they met,
You know,
They both had to be in camps as teenagers in the concentration camps.
And then my dad volunteered to be in the 442nd,
Which was a battle battalion for the U.
S.
Army made up of Japanese Americans.
And so they were the highest decorated battalion ever in U.
S.
Army history.
And so what they did was,
You know,
They unleashed these angry Japanese men on the poor Italians.
They sent them on every suicide mission is what they did.
And they succeeded.
My dad was never bitter.
He was never prejudiced about any of that that happened.
He just wanted us to know that it did happen and it could happen again.
My dad,
He's always interviewed about it.
His name is Yoshio Nakamura.
And he's still alive.
He's 96.
And he still drives.
Well,
Since you like Sasquatch,
I'll tell you about two sightings I had.
And none of them,
Not here,
But the first one,
I was in high school in California and Yosemite of all places,
Very well traveled.
And there's a second waterfall called Nevada Falls.
And so it's a very well hiked trail.
And I was having lunch on a rock and I saw something large and dark sticking up out of the top of the bushes and moving parallel along.
But I thought,
What is that?
So I started going down there and it just went boom,
It was gone.
And when I got down there,
The bushes were like way over my head.
So I thought that had to be Sasquatch.
You know,
There's no other explanation for what it was.
I mean,
Bears can't leap up onto a ledge,
You know,
As far as I know.
And that bear,
A black bear that lives in the area wouldn't walk upright for that far,
You know.
And so I think it could be with the Sasquatch.
And then my second sighting was in Oklahoma of all places.
So I was going to,
I was teaching a workshop at Quartz Mountain for the Oklahoma Arts Institute.
And it's a really great thing they do.
They have this teaching workshops,
You know,
For free for Oklahoma art teachers.
And so they bring in people to give them ideas on projects they could do with their students.
And they work so hard,
You know,
They're so dedicated,
All these art teachers.
And so I'm driving up,
So it wasn't really a mountain,
Not like here,
You know,
Quartz Mountain was like a hill or something.
And I'm driving up the road and some deer come out in front of my car.
I stopped the car and there's this big lumbering shape coming after them.
And I turn around and look and the thing was like the size of a refrigerator,
Double dark shape.
And so I tried to get out of the car and take a picture and it just melted away into the shadows and was gone.
So that was pretty close.
And so I thought,
Okay,
That had to be Sasquatch.
It's kind of like when you see something that's inexplicable,
How does your mind,
How can you figure it out?
Well,
You want to go,
Okay,
That was something else.
So,
You know,
You try to justify that and what you didn't see what you saw,
But I know what I saw both times and there wasn't any other plausible explanation than Sasquatch in both cases because the size of the animal,
It was amazing.
You know,
I don't tell many people about that because most people think I'm some kind of quack otherwise.
I'm so curious,
You know,
Because I have thought long and hard about this Sasquatch phenomena and people seeing,
You know,
Something that they haven't seen before in their life or something that they can't readily identify or categorize.
I don't know if you heard what happened in Taos a few years ago with the two hunters.
It made the front page of the national news and New Mexico newspapers,
The newspapers that still exist,
That is.
But these two hunters were in Taos and they both had time off.
They're in the film industry.
So they were in the woods in Taos and had been hunting for,
I think it was pretty much all day and having no luck.
And they looked over to the next ridge and they saw these two very tall people,
Basically.
They thought there were people standing on the ridge and they thought,
You know,
We're going to go talk to them because they might be scaring the game away.
So they hiked and hiked and hiked.
And when they got there,
The two people weren't there.
And that was confusing for them because there was nowhere else that they could have gone.
And so they just thought,
Okay,
Today's a wash,
We'll hunt tomorrow.
So the next day they moved their camp and they were driving and were going up and down these windy roads and both of them looked down into this kind of shallow valley.
And they saw this huge movie set up in the,
There were like multiple buildings,
Lots of people,
Lots of vehicles.
They were like a little far away so they couldn't see all the details.
But both of them agreed,
Wow,
There's a movie shooting back here.
We had no idea that this was even happening,
But they got a lot of stuff into the backwoods that most sets wouldn't normally do.
And so they went down a dip and there were some trees and when they came up over the rise,
They looked out and it was all gone.
There was nothing there.
And they were so shocked and so I think kind of horrified.
And there are two guys that don't believe in this stuff at all,
Whatever it was,
But they were so kind of blown out of their own reality that they reported it to the police.
They reported it to the authorities.
That's how it got into the news.
And so my rational thought brain thinks,
Oh,
They just,
They saw some things like a dimension bled through,
You know,
It's things from another dimension that entered our reality briefly and it just so happened to be seen.
And so for Sasquatch,
I think much the same.
Maybe they're not in our reality all the time.
Maybe they can go in and out,
But that might explain why people see them sometimes.
You know,
You said it melted into the shadows.
I mean,
That's very interesting phrasing.
Maybe it just melted back into its own dimension,
But I find that it's not scary.
It's kind of exciting to think that these things are happening and that they're all around us.
Yeah.
So I think,
You know,
Probably the same thinking can go for many things,
You know,
So probably religious miracles and things like that could be dimensional transitions or that certain beings are interstitial,
You know,
That they exist in between spaces and time.
And so who am I to say it can't?
I just like to be open to the possibility that that could exist.
And so I've seen,
You know,
I've never seen a UFO here,
Which I'm very disappointed to say,
So I'm still waiting for my UFO sighting.
You know,
I was wearing some jewelry and I had my ponytail and some lady comes up,
You know,
With her Texas accent wearing every turquoise jewelry she owned.
And she goes,
Excuse me,
What Pueblo are you from?
You know,
I'm usually pretty good at telling,
You know,
I said,
Well,
I'm from the Sukiaki Pueblo.
And she goes,
Oh,
Where is that?
And I go,
It's quite far East from here.
And she took my picture and that was it,
You know,
So I'm probably in some slideshow somewhere in Texas.
This is this man from the Sukiaki Pueblo.
And that's a wrap episode 48 of Bite Sized Blessings has come to a close.
Thank you so much for listening.
And I look forward to producing episode 49 and 50.
Can you believe it?
50 episodes so very soon for you.
I need to thank my guest,
My very special guest,
Joel Nakamura for sharing his story with me.
I first found out about this amazing artist on a trip through Santa Fe.
I stopped at Harry's Roadhouse,
Walked into the lobby and was confronted by all these fabulous t-shirts with these really unique and fun designs.
Of course,
I grabbed the Sasquatch shirt.
It was a prized possession for many years.
And so I was so very excited when this illustrious artist agreed to be on my show.
To see more of his work,
You can visit my website,
Bite-sized-blessings.
Com.
Under his profile,
There's a link to his website.
Click on that link and it'll take you right to his artist page where you'll be able to view and appreciate more of his art.
I also need to thank the artists who created the music for this episode,
Raphael Crux,
Chilled Music,
Music L.
Files,
Winnie the Moog,
And Frank Schroeder.
For complete attribution,
Please see the Bite-Sized Blessings website at bite-sized-blessings.
Com.
On the website,
You'll find links to books,
Other artists,
Playlists,
And music I think will lift and inspire you.
Thank you for listening,
And here's my one request.
Be like Joel.
Realize that folk tales and myths are alive and in front of us,
If only we have eyes to see them.
