<Begin Segment 61>

TI: Let's talk a little bit more about the, the Redress Foundation.

HS: Well, the Redress Foundation was actually formally put together (...). A year later, we really, in March of (1989), we really formed the actual body.

TI: I'm sorry, you said 1998, or 1989?

HS: Sorry, 1989, sorry. 1989, I'm sorry. 1989, it was, a year later we had formed the actual group, and it was, people who became, I represented a central, or what we call not central, Canada, but I represented Alberta, and there were people in B.C. and people from the prairies. I've met the prairie areas, and of course Art Miki was from Winnipeg, and then we had people from, from eastern Canada. And when we met, they decided that I would become chairman of that, of that group.

TI: Now, why do you think you were, you were chosen as chairman?

HS: Well, one thing, I had, all this time, I had been, I had been either with the, with the group in western Canada or the group in eastern Canada. I had really been an independent in the terms that I was always a member of the, of this advisory council that was advisory to the, to the government of Canada.

TI: So was it almost important to have someone who wasn't either western or eastern?

HS: Or eastern, yeah. Someone who was neutral in that I didn't have a lot of baggage with me. Like Art Miki had a lot of the western ideas that the people were expecting him to do certain things for other, for that, their group. And then there was this big contingent from Toronto that were most anxious that most of the money would go to Toronto, like 12 million to develop the, to develop the regeneration of the communities.

TI: So you were viewed as not as biased as many other...

HS: I was not a threat to anybody. [Laughs] I think they found out later that I was a threat to everybody, because I refused to accept certain things that would happen. Everybody wanted, I mean, right away, people, somebody from Ottawa phoned me saying they wanted the money right now. They deserved so many millions of dollars because Ottawa was, after all, the capital, and they, they have so many Japanese people. And of course I, I just turned them down flat saying, "Not a red cent. We're gonna hold onto it, and then we're gonna develop our own system." Well, what happened was we got some very good legal and financial advice. And immediately... we received the money in September, we received the money within a few months, the actual cash. We put it into, into the bank, into the financial part of the Royal Bank of Canada, into their financial division, and it immediately began to get interest. And within five years, we had not twelve million, we had eighteen million. So we had increased it by fifty percent.

TI: So you had, essentially, invested the original twelve million.

HS: Invested... million. Yeah, and despite the fact that we were also accepting grants and applications, and we were sending out money. But we did it in such a way that we were, we were taking out the money, but it was done in a way that you couldn't get the money until you were absolutely -- people say, "Oh, yeah, we're gonna build this." Okay, give us a bill of what your initial bill --

TI: Well, I'm curious, did you ever, at some point, when it was, like, eighteen million dollars, think about some of that as being kind of an endowment, that it would potentially sort of...

HS: Well, that was, that eventually, that was a big thing that we did, was put it in endowment with the National Association of Japanese Canadians.

TI: Oh, so there's, some of that money still is around?

HS: Oh, still there. They have an endowment, yes.

TI: And how large did you guys decide to make the endowment?

HS: The endowment eventually, because there was so much money we made, I think the endowment was somewhere close to two to three million dollars, that they got. But the initial thing was everybody, right away, they wanted to break it up in little pieces. Toronto wanted so many millions because they were the biggest group, and the Vancouver... and we resisted, just said, "No. You'll get it when you have some project. Give me a project, we'll give you the money."

TI: And so overall, when you look across Canada, what were kind of the criteria? What were you trying to do at that point?

HS: Well, we were trying to develop a sense of community, we were trying to do, we had certain prerequisites. We wanted to have so much money go to seniors, seniors' groups, and they had to have some kind of project that would help them. So that meant seniors, nursing-type homes, that type of thing. And it did, they, Toronto did come up with a good plan. Now you've got a big Momiji Center, which today houses Japanese Canadian older seniors, and they live there as, it's not nursing entirely, but it's a residence that gives them quite a few advantages. Then there was one that we made in Vancouver called Nikkei Place, and they have a seniors' residence there. Those are the two major ones. There's one in (Vernon, B.C.) and there's one in Ontario in a place called Beansville, and these were things that we put into.

TI: And so were you consciously also thinking geographically to try to disperse the funds?

HS: Oh, yeah. We had to do it in such a way that everybody got a piece, you might say, and nobody got too much. The two major centers, Vancouver and Toronto, got the majority of the money, no question.

TI: And was that based kind of on population?

HS: Population, on population.

TI: So geographically, you kind of knew where the population was, so you kind of knew...

HS: We knew exactly where the population was...

TI: About how much was there, but you were really trying to push them to actually come up with, with projects.

HS: We want the project because we wanted everything that, whenever we gave money, we gave it in seed money, "to get you guys going. And you've got to get your community to develop that, whatever project you've got." These are capital projects. We had programs that we did, and we had, the capital projects were mainly cultural centers, senior citizens' homes, and things like Japanese gardens that were planned by various people. Even Edmonton, see, they had a cultural center there, they couldn't, they couldn't, even with so many hundred thousand, they couldn't get their own center unless they raised several million dollars. Well, they, the great plan that they came up with was, okay, the city has community centers, and the city will, they have funded those community centers. And there are several centers, these community centers, where the people have eventually, using those community centers, had finally disappeared. Because all the young kids are gone, they're, older people living around those areas are not as enthusiastic anymore. So you can use these centers, and so they said, "Well, join one of those centers," and they did. They joined one, and they said, "Okay, together, we will have a center." And so that was accepted, and so we put money into it, changed the community center that was already there, and made it into a Japanese, Japanese and community center. And so this was done in a number of places so that you had centers that were viable because it was a community center to begin with.

<End Segment 61> - Copyright © 2006 Densho. All Rights Reserved.