<Begin Segment 47>

AI: In fact, shortly after you married, didn't, was that when the two of you traveled to Washington, D.C. to try and find out more about --

MK: Right, exactly. Well, he was, this is why he was so supportive. He said, "Well, we'll go to Washington, D.C.," while he's waiting for his assignment. We will look into the, my father's assets, what happened to them. And we did find out. We first found out that my father's oldest brother, Shozo, owned eighty percent of the Tsutakawa company. And he and his brother Jin owned ten, ten percent each. And so, legally, if we had fought it, they were all -- let's see, Shozo was still alive, so, and then his family never cared to fight it. And then, even Jin's family, they were not in any position to fight it. So we just decided, you know, even if we fought it legally it wouldn't have... and we didn't have the funds. So we just gave up on that. But we at least knew that that's the way it was.

AI: You knew what had happened. Yes. That all the business assets, everything had gone to the Alien Property Custodian.

MK: Right.

AI: And it was almost impossible for you to get some portion of it.

MK: Right. Ah, they say sometimes, some hundred years later maybe it will be resolved, resolved. But yeah, it's not something that we would... and we inquired whether we, Shozo's son would... but he had no interest whatsoever. And Jin's family was not interested. So, it was not a greed, or wanting it, but we, out of curiosity, yeah, we looked into it. And then, even my father's... why he was targeted as a, such a suspect. I mean, I got all his papers. And that was only about twenty years ago that I wrote and I had to pay for each sheet that they Xeroxed. They even Xeroxed blank sheets of paper and I got 'em. I had to pay for them. But anyway, out of curiosity. But at this point I'm satisfied that, true, there was really nothing that he had done illegally. So, I can happily say, "Well, I tried my best, and at least I kind of helped pave the way for the people in my category to be redressed." And so, in appreciation, out of the twenty thousand (...), if anybody says too much about it I said, "I gave all that away to the universities so that they can use that in the line of education." So, at least half of it I did give (...) to UC Davis and the state universities, and then to the law office and so forth. So, at this point, I'm satisfied.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.