<Begin Segment 62>

TI: Okay. So the scope of the project looks like it became more expensive...

RT: Yeah.

TI: And the direction changed. And yet to this day, you're still involved. You're still helping out with this project?

RT: Well, they're hoping I will.

TI: [Laughs]. Okay.

RT: Because the way I look at it, it's not that I want the glory in it. I don't care about glory in this. But I think people like Chester Tanaka, Tom (Kawaguchi) (both started in Go For Broke, Inc. which became the National Japanese American Historical Society).

JN: Mike Masaoka.

RT: Mike Masaoka. All these guys, they're the guys that put it together. Sure we were there, too, with 'em. But these are the guys that aren't here no more. Let's show a little respect to them. And I don't care. If they wanna put a naked lady in the middle of it, that's their privilege. But let's show a little respect to these guys. But it's not there. And now, it's not, it's not a 442nd monument no more. What'd they call it? But it's about other things now, about the Sanseis and whatnot. So I talked to one of the guys that was gonna be one of my big donors. And he looked at me and he smiled and he said, "Rudy, you remember what I said?" I says, "Yeah, you said that you would do anything for the 442 people, because those are the guys who put us back in as Americans." And now these guys, they had talked me into coming in and joining back into the whole thing. But like I told them, "No, I can't come back in and do it, because am I gonna go tell this guy, well, it's not for Go for Broke or nothing, it's for other things? These guys are gonna tell me, 'Forget it.'"

JN: The parallel here is that we're doing redress. We got stalled. And we had to bring in the veterans, finally. And that put us over the hump. They took over the foundation. They thought they were gonna raise all this money on their own. They're stalled. They're trying to bring back the vets. That's really what the scenario is.

TI: So that's kind of the current situation right now? So they're sort of hurting.

JN: They can't raise the money, because they have no basis for raising the money without the vets.

RT: See, they thought the way they can raise the money is, they're gonna name all these guys that got a lotta money. You got to, donate this, this, this...

JN: That's the strategy.

RT: But it don't work that way.

JN: We sat in those meetings (and listened to this strategy).

<End Segment 62> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.