At Tule Lake, Marvin Opler befriended several well-known Japanese American internees. One of these was Yamato Ichihashi, one of the first academics of Asian ancestry in the United States. Ichihashi wrote a comprehensive account of his experiences as an internee. Opler was impressed by the work of George Tamura, a Japanese American artist who spent his teenage years imprisoned at Tule Lake. Marvin Opler also co-authored an article on Senryū folk poetry with another internee, F. Obayashi, which was published in the "Journal of American Folklore" in 1945.