<Begin Segment 28>

TI: I want to just come back now to the Japanese American community, to finish this up. Because you were an observer during a period -- I'm talking about the redress -- when you were aware of what people like Henry Miyatake were, were thinking about and doing, and it was a time when the community was sort of grappling with, "What can we do?" New information was coming out about what the government knew and what they suppressed during that period, and yet it seemed so daunting. I've interviewed people like Henry and others who were involved, like Cherry Kinoshita, who were involved, and to take on the U.S. government to get redress for Japanese Americans seemed like such a daunting task. As an observer and advisor to some of these individuals, what were you thinking? Did you think it was possible for the Japanese Americans to get redress?

CS: I never believed that our United States government would come forward with the response that it came forward with, ultimately. I believed that at best we could have gotten an apology. But at the time, when I was involved in discussions and as advisor to persons like Henry Miyatake, Shosuke Sasaki, Cherry Kinoshita, Min Masuda -- and I'm dropping names now, because these are people who greatly influenced me in my thinking on this -- I thought that the concept that Henry Miyatake came up with made sense from a mathematical or an engineering standpoint, but I wasn't quite certain whether it would fly from a political, social standpoint. But what we had going for us, though, was Dan Evans as the governor of the state of Washington, Mike Lowry as the United States Congress member, and the process by which these things would move. And ultimately, when the national Japanese American Citizens League came aboard and decided it was a good idea, because at the national level, it was not always thought to be a good idea. At the Seattle level, it was not always thought to be a good idea. So we came through the growing pains of a new idea, and the establishment of a trend or a movement, which ultimately brought us to where we were with redress. But I was pleasantly surprised, however, when it got off the ground in the Seattle Chapter, it got off the ground in the national JACL, and when it was so favorably received in Congress. When Mike Lowry sponsored the first bill, and then when, ultimately, we had the bill signed by Ronald Reagan, and so this was totally unexpected, because of all the people in the world, to be aboard this idea and acceptance of it, a Republican president who had come from the background that Ronald Reagan had come from, would be the least likely person to be supportive of it.

So down the line, as the bill for redress moved along, and gradually was approved, and was signed by the president and became a reality, I was literally stunned. And especially when I do the mathematical calculation, it's one billion, six hundred thirty-seven million dollars. I could not have ever conceived of that figure. Not at all. And as much as I love Henry Miyatake, and loved Shosuke Sasaki -- [laughs] -- I thought they were way off in left field when it came to calculating. But the idea of redress and an apology was easy for me to accept. But then again, in my field, in the law, if you think you are right, you pursue something regardless of the result. And so they were right, we were right, I can't claim credit for anything, but I was there. And so I say "we," because to me, the redress movement was "our movement." And so the best that we could hope for was (...) acknowledgement, acceptance, apology. So we got acknowledgement, acceptance, apology, and redress. One billion, six hundred thirty-seven million dollars. And different people have reacted to it in different ways. I have Nikkei friends who were insulted by the twenty thousand dollars, some of whom were glad to get it, and some who had different reactions to it, but it's not something that you would expect people to be overjoyed about. There were some people who were pleased and some who were not pleased. But the interesting thing is, I have never heard any criticism by the non-Nikkei public in the United States about the expenditure of the funds for redress. If it happened, it just has not come to my attention.

TI: Yeah, I know, I think there is, there has been criticism, especially more recently, I've heard.

<End Segment 28> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.