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Title: Masao Watanabe Interview
Narrator: Masao Watanabe
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: June 19, 1998
Densho ID: denshovh-wmasao-01-0049

<Begin Segment 49>

TI: I'm going to ask you a couple of other questions, and I'm doing this at the end on purpose, in case you want to edit this out. But...

MW: You mean all of this was not on purpose? [Laughs]

TI: No, that's all good, but I want to sort of come to a conclusion. But then I did want to ask you about your opinions of redress, and I wanted to do it at the end, so in case you didn't want this to be included, it'll be easily taken out.

MW: No, I got no problem with redress. It's a pretty wide question, and...

TI: Yeah, let me break it down. I guess the first question would be, when redress was first starting, it actually originated a lot in Seattle, so there's probably more discussions in Seattle than other places. And wanted to know, initially, when you first heard of redress, what you thought of the concept?

MW: Well, in a way, I was very strongly for it, because what the government did was wrong. So if that should answer your first, the first part of your question. Some of this puttin' dollar figures onto something as significant socially, I don't know how you would do it. What kind of a formula do you use? You know, is it worth five cents, or $10,000, or $20,000, or whatever? That part was a mystery to me, just the... whether it was right or wrong, that's pretty clear. I'll just hope that the succeeding generations, regardless of the racial backgrounds, will never have to go through something like this, would be my wish. But I think the government itself learned a hell of a lot. Yeah, I would be disappointed if they didn't.

<End Segment 49> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.