<Begin Segment 32>

AI: Well, a lot happened at about the same time, but the, your bill was signed by Governor Gardner in '86, so two years before. So did you get any kind of reactions from your family members or other people when this was going on or when it came about?

MN: Not really. Well, the family came out, but as far as my friends in the white community, never told them anything about it. They didn't know what was going on unless they saw the... oh, it didn't come out in the Times, but it was in the community papers.

AI: And then later on when the national redress became such big news, did you get any kind of reaction from white friends or neighbors at that point?

MN: No, nothing that that I recall.

AI: What about your own reactions or thoughts when you finally received your national redress in the mail?

MN: Well, people ask, "Was that compensation satisfactory, $20,000?" But (when we) think about it and say, "What if you lost a leg or something? Is $20,000 enough?" So what you lost in your life, is $20,000 enough? It's difficult to put a number on that. And I remember, one of my sons, we were getting petitions out about getting the redress, I think, at one time, and he remarked, "Look how much money we lost already. Grandma's gone, Grandpa's gone, Dad's gone." He says, "That's a lot of money we lost already."

AI: And as you say, there's really no way of putting an amount.

MN: Yeah. There's, there is no amount that is, that would cover all our suffering.

AI: What about that letter of apology that came?

MN: I had no reaction on that one. In fact, at the last, one of the... oh, I know at Bellevue Community College, I went to talk to the students, and then I just happened to find that apology. It was tucked away in a file, and I pulled it out, and I passed it around.

AI: So by that time, you had been starting to speak to classes. Tell me about that. How did that get started and what, what was that experience like?

MN: Oh, I guess Mako asked me to address these schools, teachers' workshop, but I (said), "Okay, I'll do it," but gee, (I) wasn't that well-prepared, and I learned a lot from it.

AI: So as you were getting ready to go out, you...

MN: Yeah, you keep changing things and you learned more what people would like to know. I don't know, really, what they want to know.

AI: But you would tell them about your own experience.

MN: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.