Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Fred Korematsu - Kathryn Korematsu Interview
Narrators: Fred Korematsu, Kathryn Korematsu
Interviewers: Lorraine Bannai (primary); Tetsuden Kashima (secondary)
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: May 14, 1996
Densho ID: denshovh-kfred_g-01-0011

<Begin Segment 11>

TK: This is my final question. If you had, if you were asked to give a message to the third or fourth generation of Japanese Americans, or just Americans in general, based upon your experiences, what kind of message might you like to give?

FK: Well, the message is that we need more people in public office, in Congress, and in the Senate in Washington. And because I realized that when the redress bill went into Congress, and if it wasn't for Congressman Norm Mineta and Congressman Bob Matsui and the two senators, Daniel Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, I don't think, I think... I'm afraid that it wouldn't have passed, if they didn't push the bill. And you know, on television, they showed what was going on regarding to the redress. And here Norm Mineta, Congressman Norm Mineta, got up in front of the whole Congress and told 'em about what happened in camp and so forth, when he was a boy. And boy, that takes a lot of guts to do things, something like that in front of Congress. And he showed how important he was, that really, you know, I can feel for him. And he was a good congressman. And not only that, Dan Inouye, he was up there. And we wondered about the $20,000 that we wanted to get, and how we were gonna get it. It was rumored that we weren't gonna get it. And we all met with him, Dan Inouye, in his office, and he says, "The way to go in getting the $20,000 is through an entitlement, and that's the way we should go." And that's the way we went, and we got it. The money was there for us because of entitlement, and if it wasn't for him, we wouldn't have had that. So things like that -- it's important that we have people like that, and we still need more, because they're not going to be here for many years, and we need more. Because even judges and so forth, lot of times you have difficult times with judges. They have their own ideas, too, and maybe sometimes it's against the Constitution. They may ignore it, so we gotta be aware of that, too, to get good judges up there. We need more Japanese, or more Asian judges.

So I say, one thing is, education is very important, and to, not to fool around and really study and get up and get a good position to help out. And that's the way... everybody's trying to do it now, and I think that's the way to go.

TK: Thank you.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 1996 Densho. All Rights Reserved.