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BF: Do you have any other kind of memorable anecdotes regarding some of your lobbying, some of your dealing with people who were particularly opposed?

GU: Opposed? Yeah, I want to talk about someone who was particularly opposed and then I want to talk about someone who was particularly in favor. The man who was particularly opposed was a Senator from my home state, Malcolm Wallop. Malcolm Wallop is descended from some English nobility that settled cattle ranches in my state. In fact, he is loosely related to Queen Elizabeth, who visited Malcolm Wallop's ranch when she came to, came to the United States maybe twenty years ago. And I walked into Malcolm (Wallop's office) and I, I had been working a little bit with one of his aides, who is now at Stanford, and I introduced myself as a friend of Joe Dokes and we started talking. And then I said, "Well, I'm here to ask you for some, for support on Japanese American redress." I was also sort of sniffing around, hoping not to hear that someone like Malcolm or someone like Jesse Helms would filibuster the bill. Okay, 'cause that would've killed it. And what happened was that Malcolm started screaming at me. And I just couldn't believe it. I, I couldn't believe it. I was, I was shaken. And he said things like, "Well, before you get anything, the Northern Cheyenne should get something." The fact is, that his great-great, his great-great grandfather carved a ranch out of Northern Cheyenne territory. Come on now.

BF: That's ironic.

GU: And the real answer, apparently there was, there was someone in Casper or Sheridan, Wyoming who was a Pacific war veteran who had a bee in his bonnet about this issue and had been talking to Malcolm about it for years. So I walked into that.

BF: Well, what did you do? Just turn around and walk out? [Laughs]

GU: I said, "Gee, you know, I've got another meeting here in five minutes." But he screamed at me for maybe a minute or two.

CK: Raised his voice?

GU: Oh, yeah. It was, it was a screaming match, and surprisingly, he screamed even though there was an aide in his office. He was, he had problems, I mean, he had real problems with arrogance. And pretty soon, he barely won re-election a couple of years later and then he retired from the Senate. But he apparently treated that way, treated people who were farmers, and ranchers, and lobbying, with the same kind of arrogance but I'm sure, not screaming. He was a Yale English major and thought of himself as an intellectual in everything. And I didn't like him then and I don't like him now.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.