<Begin Segment 42>

AI: What did you feel was the significance of this redress actually occurring?

MY: Well, I was very happy that it, that it passed. And it was wonderful the Isseis were finally getting it, but it just seemed a little, too little too soon to me at that time. Part, well...

AI: Too late?

MY: Too late, too little too late. Because the Isseis were, like, many of them were in wheelchairs, they looked as though -- you know, I thought, why couldn't they have done this sooner? I mean it was just, it was rather sad to me because most of them, you know, if they had asked my mother, in 1988, my mother was eighty-nine. 1990 she was ninety-one -- she was very clearheaded, she was -- but then what did they ask people who were over a hundred or something? A hundred or over a hundred? And by that time, so all of them were just act like, there was just no awareness of what was going on, they just brought their bodies into the Hall of Justice. Which I thought was kind of a sad ceremony. And, you know, what are you going to do?

AI: What about for yourself? When you finally received this thing in the mail.

MY: Yeah, I thought well, you know -- the recognition by the President? It seemed like it was a tremendous, tremendous advance to the recognition of Japanese Americans, I think. And at the same time, there were kind of different -- you had these mixed feelings, you know, because at the same time I was working with Billie Masters, my friend who was this Native American woman who has been going to Washington for years and years and years to try to get redress for Native Americans and not succeeding. But then what I did feel was that perhaps this would open the door for these other groups who are, even for the African Americans who are looking for some kind of redress for historical injustice that had been done to their people. I thought that was, for that reason I thought it would be a, was a good public relations thing, you know, but... I'm not sure that it has done that. From this vantage point, where we're standing right now. What do you think? Do you think it has?

<End Segment 42> - Copyright © 2002 Densho. All Rights Reserved.