<Begin Segment 29>

TI: In terms of lessons to be learned, is there anything that we can take from the, the redress Japanese Americans received, and learn from that in terms of potential redress or reparations to African Americans because of slavery? Is there anything that we can, we can take from that?

CS: I have to be careful of my response to this, because one of my dear friends at Harvard has written a book on redress, and he goes around the country promoting it. And I totally disagree with him on it. I jokingly say, "Where's my twenty acres and my mule?" And, because after all, my grandfather on my mother's side, my great-grandfather on my mother's side, was a slave. And so therefore, I'm fourth-generation from slavery, and so I'm entitled to my forty acres and a mule. I do not seriously contend that I would be entitled, as a person four generations removed from slavery, to any form of redress, but I would not be concerned if somebody else got it, but I don't see the redress for Japanese Americans as being similar to redress for African Americans. If you chart it out -- and you with an engineering background would know how you would chart this out from an engineering standpoint. The only thing that is in common is the claim for redress. Then you go below the claim, and you find out what is the basis of your claim. With the Nikkei community, it was, "We were put in concentration camps in 1942, in this generation." With the African Americans, "Our ancestors were held in slavery in 1860 and 1865." Immediately the parallel is lost, because you are about a hundred years apart in terms of time of the last event. But there was no government action that caused slavery. It was acceptance of slavery as a way of life, as opposed to incarceration in a prison camp with barbed wire and military guards with rifles to keep people from leaving. Slavery was something altogether different. It's inhumane, there are many aspects of slavery that are frightening, and it is more than the television depiction of slavery, and Alex Haley's fine book Roots, which is probably the only information most people have about what slavery really was. But there are many, many stories about slavery that are handed down from family to family, and there are some families who recall good events, and some families that recall events that were horrible.

And in my own case, my great-grandfather was the son of the plantation owner. His mother was a beautiful woman, a house slave, who bore children for the master. And they were not field slaves, they didn't have to work in the fields, and they didn't have to do the things that some of the other slaves, but I would not wish to draw a social structure in the inhumanity of slavery. I can never justify human bondage, never under any circumstances. And so regardless of the more or less pleasant circumstances of my slave ancestor that I can identify -- and I knew my great-grandfather, I met him once when I was four or five years old -- I would not say that because my great-grandfather did not suffer as a slave, that slavery was not bad. It was bad that his mother was a slave, that she was subjected to the sexual advances of the plantation owner and that she bore children for him. This is human bondage, and that is, in our present-day nomenclature, we would call it rape.

So at any rate, back to the question of parallels between redress for Japanese Americans and redress for African Americans, I think the only thing they have in common is the demand for redress. Everything else fails in comparison when you put them on a scale and say, this happened in this case, this happened in this case, this happened in this case, this happened in that case. And I was never put in prison because I am African American, and every Nikkei who received redress did have that experience, either as infants or children, or as adults. But to be uprooted and taken away with twenty-four-hour notice and all those other things that go along with it, totally un-American. And at the time of slavery, slavery was approved by the U.S. Supreme Court, it was approved by all the structures in our society, and I think that the challenge to our government for redress for African Americans relates to the acceptance of the established political structure of slavery, of human bondage as a way of life in America, and that the government in 2004 owes the descendants of those slaves something. I would never stand in a line to apply for redress for African Americans.

TI: Well, that's all the questions I have, is there anything else you wanted to, to share or add at the end of this?

CS: Not really. The only thing is that I would say that though I jokingly talk about "some of my best friends are..." but there are people in the Nikkei community in Seattle who were very much a part of my learning and awareness, and some non-Nikkei, I think. Reverend Emery Andrews was an inspiration to me, Floyd Schmoe, an inspiration to me, Gordon Hirabayashi an inspiration to me. More currently, Cherry Kinoshita an inspiration to me. Dr. Minoru Masuda, now deceased, an inspiration to me. (...) Dr. (Terrance) Toda, now deceased, an inspiration to me. Tak Kubota, now deceased, an inspiration to me. And so it was... and of course, my dear friend Ike Ikeda -- no relation to you -- but Ike still is an inspiration to me. He and I are still very close. But, and then, of course, in my own family, I have two daughters-in-law who are Japanese, and that means I have grandchildren who are Asian (...). And that is another part of my life that brings me great joy, but also gives me a connection to the Nikkei community.

TI: Well, thank you again so much for doing this interview. This was wonderful.

CS: Okay.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.