<Begin Segment 8>

AI: When you actually received in the mail your letter of apology and your payment, what was your reaction?

TI: Oh, naturally I kept it and put it in my scrapbook. And then I wanted to use that money for something lasting, supposedly, and I bought a Honda. And I was shocked. It took -- I only had about a hundred dollars left. [Laughs] And so I had a reliable Honda for many years, and then I gave it to my son-in-law. So it's still within the blood line as a continual reminder that I got this car as an apology from the government of the United States, the wrong that was done. And so I still experience it vicariously -- once in a while I ride in it -- the money that the government did pay me (makes me feel good).

AI: And the apology, the letter of apology, when you saw that, what was your feeling?

TI: Well, to have the President of the United States do that, was a miracle, in my mind. It really couldn't happen, but it did. Rarely does a president of the United States apologize for any wrongdoing in this country. And there've been many, especially Native Americans. And we still have a problem with that. Similarly with Australia just recently in the Olympics, it stirred it up again. A group were mistreated. Alienated, and as the Hawaiians in Hawaii also. So it's a long struggle internationally, let alone the United States.

AI: When you, when you're thinking about all that has happened and all that has changed including the redress and the apology and the payment, now you must still get the question when you go out and do speaking engagements and talk to classes, do you get the question: "What do you think could happen now," or do you talk about this issue of whether a similar kind of injustice like the internment could happen again?

TI: Right. Well, that's one, I'm not sure what I stated before, but while I was in Minidoka, I sort of vowed to myself that I would never allow or speak out and try to stop any kind of similar behaviors from any other group in the United States. And so that's still within me, that if there are opportunities to right wrongs, I will become involved in it.

AI: And one other activity that you did that you were involved in was in 1992 here in Seattle at the Wing Luke Asian Museum, a major exhibit was put on called E.O. 9066: Fifty Years Before and Fifty Years After. And you were involved in helping to put together materials for that exhibition. Could you say a little bit about that?

TI: Right. Well, I'm a collector, and so I had a lot of stuff about the internment. And so it was only sharing that, is my role, whereas my wife was really working, attending meetings after meetings and meetings to help develop that major exhibit at the Wing Luke Asian Museum. And, and I got the publicity, whereas the other people that worked real hard really didn't. I felt kind of uneasy about that. It was a wonderful exhibit, and it needs to be expanded upon because most people just still don't know that it actually happened. I'm on the board of the Wing Luke, and we're working toward finding a site for our much-enlarged museum, where a portion of that would be a long-term exhibit about the internment experience.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.