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PW: So going back to redress, of course, the act was passed, and then over time, checks started to come in to people, and that was something that sometimes impacted people in different personal ways. Did you have any stories about that?

MY: Yeah. What I noticed about that was when people started getting the checks, there was a range of responses to getting the checks. And some were not so happy or thrilled that they're getting this check, but there was some sense of disbelief or others, I could see their eyes welling up. I think some couldn't believe that this was actually happening. And I recognized, because of work I'd done before, that there's a sense of trauma that's involved, and that the actual paper, of the letters, can be a visceral trigger for the memories that people had maybe kind of suppressed for many years, depending upon what their particular family situation was and so forth. And I remember one family in particular -- and I believe that it's okay for me to talk about now on this interview -- she had shared with us in a Bible study at one point that the whole story was very difficult for her because she had one brother who was a Heart Mountain resister, and the other brother was a 442 veteran and well-decorated. But their family never talked about the wartime out of respect for the brother that had been in prison, he was sent to Leavenworth for the duration of the war. So the one brother who was a 442 veteran, he always respected his brother as well for his decision that he made, and she always talked about how painful it was for her to have that memory but no discussion about it ever at family gatherings and what have you. And that didn't come out until the early '90s about the Heart Mountain resister stories. And so then their children found out about it at that point in time because there were kind of public forums where they shared their stories. And so those kinds of stories were not part of the whole collection of stories during the hearings, because there was a tactic about not having those stories prominently told.

PW: I'm nodding my head because I understand what you're saying, but maybe explain a little bit more about that for somebody who may not understand that there was some, there were "desirable stories" maybe, but I'm not sure exactly how to explain this, but there was a narrative that was important to make sure that this...

MY: My understanding of it was that there was much more encouragement of highlighting the experience of the 442 veterans in terms of the narrative during the whole process of the redress movement, but that there was, in some sense, a suppression of the resister stories, or the stories of "no-no boys." Because those wouldn't play well in terms of the national audience and also a congressional audience to get the redress bill passed. That's kind of my understanding of what took place. And so there was a deliberate kind of, how should we say, shaping of the narrative, but the reality is that there had been multiple stories in the Japanese American community. And so even though stories were being told during the decade of the '80s, after redress was won, then other stories began to emerge because it was okay for people now to kind of come forth with their stories. And this is a case in point where I had that experience with a particular family where this was the situation. And it was quite painful in many respects, but also quite liberating in another respect because, for me, there was a sense of empowerment that went on as I met her family and me her brother who was Heart Mountain resister. It was great to be involved with them and encouraging him to go ahead and speak his truth as well, which he finally did after people began to organize for that.

PW: Did this impact your sermons?

MY: Absolutely, absolutely. Because we're speaking about truths that are needing to be told and heard, and also the fact that different people have their own stories. So there's not one narrative, there's multiple narratives to the Japanese American story. And we were all talking about our narrative needs to be part of the larger narrative of American history, right? So what goes for us too as a community operates within the community in terms of our intracommunity dynamics as well.

PW: You had discussed earlier that there were support kinds of systems and ways for people to tell their stories in a safe space within the church. But I think... I guess I just would love you to explain that more. Like what did that look like? Did it look like after church there were sessions, or were they one-on-one, were they group, I'm curious.

MY: I started to initiate our own Day of Remembrance program, so we would have a Day of Remembrance worship. The community had Day of Remembrance programs in San Francisco annually, but we would start to have our own within the congregation because there's a different dynamic when you're sharing a story within your own family so to speak, your own community. So I remember there were key people who were really wanting to share their stories. I remember Mas Nakata, who made these facsimiles of the barracks in Topaz, and he would come and he would share the story with the children, and he would show them this facsimile of the barracks and kind of share their stories with folks. Sadie Tajima who was our organist who was in Topaz, and kind of accompanied, what was his name, Goro Suzuki, in camp when he sang, she would talk story about she would accompany him and the songs that he would sing and so forth. And so there was a variety of ways that people experienced being able to share their stories and their narratives. And I think, so that's for the congregation, and then also became therefore families, too, for the families who were sometimes here for the first time with their parents wanted to talk about the things that they wanted to share with their families in the larger community.

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