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TI: But early on in redress, I think Mike was... I read someplace where Mike Masaoka was actually opposed to the individual reparations.

GU: Yeah.

TI: Was that for practical reasons? Or was it more... what was his stance? And what changed his mind?

GU: Well, I think Mike, like a lot of Nisei, older Nisei, who, you know, couldn't, if you graduated number one in chemical engineering from Berkeley, you couldn't get a job. It was bad. And Mike remembered that. This is why these, this is why these kids fought in Italy. 'Cause they knew that they couldn't get a job. Maybe if they came back -- a lot of them didn't come back -- and they'd get a job, or their kids could get a job, or their younger brothers could get a job. So that's Mike's experience. So I think I didn't talk to him about this. But, I think he felt maybe that, I also think he felt the Nisei, the older Nisei could serve as -- or like Hosokawa, he said, "Don't rake these coals. The hakujins could get back at us. And we've been trying to forget all these years. Don't make us remember." And you know, if you want to be honest, I think (Mike) may have been thinking, "Jesus, you know, just got our first continental Japanese American into Congress. This is Norm. He's my brother-in-law. He comes from a very substantial white majority district. I don't want to put Norm on the spot. I gotta, I have to protect him. 'Cause Norm can't protect himself on this." And I think that may have been part of it, too. So, he says, for personal family reasons, "Well, I wanna protect Norm." On the other hand, if you think generally, you say, I have to protect our Japanese American Congressman. We can't throw him to the wolves on this issue and serve him up to the campus radicals. We can't do that. So this was before everything -- this was before Angus, who married my best friend's sister, a great man. Angus Macbeth, I think, graduated second in his class at Yale Law School. He's a brilliant guy, and we got him.

So, you know, after the commission hearings -- by the way, Angus Macbeth was the commission. Angus Macbeth wrote every single syllable of Personal Justice Denied, we should honor Angus. But after the commission hearings the whole mood in the community changed. And (Mike) said, well, the politics, the climate has changed. So I think Mike came around. I told Min, when he first talked to me, I think '79 or so he came to New York (to) my office at Random House. I said, "You're an old man. Don't do this." And he said, "No, I have to do it." And I said, "You know, you're always looking for some goddamn project or another. Don't do this." And he said, "I'm sorry, I'm gonna do it." And I said, Jesus, why would anybody want to do this? So I felt like Mike. It's just hopeless.

TI: So initially you felt that that --

GU: Yeah, I thought I --

TI: It was going to be a hard sell --

GU: I didn't really think about it very much but I thought this was the craziest goddamn thing I'd ever heard in my life. I don't want any part of this. But then I went to the commission hearings. And I heard these old, I guess old Issei women, they're up there crying. I said, aw, shit. I better get involved in this. I mean, I can't stand it. So I think that may have helped Mike change his mind, too. Neither side of my family went to camp 'cause we were way in the inaka, Colorado and Wyoming. They brought the camps to us. So, I think that's a bad, again a bad rap on Mike. There were a lotta elements within JACL who wanted to do Japan trade. Some of these people were sort of Washington bureaucrats of one sort or another, Japanese Americans. And they said, "Hey, these stupid farmers, they think they can get a bill through Congress. Jesus Christ, don't do this. At least let's do Japan trade. They're ridin' high. Maybe (we) can make a few bucks." And so they thought these farmers, they'll never... these idealists, like Cherry Kinoshita, what are they doing? So I think the commission hearings just galvanized the community and changed the climate. It certainly changed my attitude. I also think, maybe I wanna edit this out. When ol' Dan said, well, have a commission do a study. That's usually the way of burying it. So they do a commission study. It's put on the shelf. And no one looks at it. It's dead forever. But in this case what happened is that they did these hearings and the whole thing exploded. So that's a very long answer to a very short question.

TI: No, that's good.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.