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LH: Well, given your sort of longtime involvement in JACL, how did you see your role personally, being a member from central California to helping this nationwide effort toward redress?

FH: Well, it's, one thing, I was eligible for redress because I was considered a voluntary evacuee. And I had documents from the government showing that they gave me permission to be a voluntary evacuee. And my wife and I and our three kids -- we had three at that time -- five of us were involved in trying to get the redress awards. So naturally, financially I was interested. So, and the general purpose of redress was to me a good idea, that the government should pay for its mistakes and so that's how I got involved.

LH: Well, what was your personal role in terms of organizing, getting people in central California in the, in the JACL chapters there, involved in redress?

FH: Well, at first it wasn't easy. The reason that people thought, "Oh heck, there's no chance of getting anything out of the government." But the more we worked on it, the more the possibilities became that we would get redress. And then we went out to different clubs, the smaller Japanese clubs and asked them to join JACL and told them what we were doing. And because money was involved, more and more people were interested. You know, money comes into everything, and when they saw a chance at getting $20,000.00 they became interested. And we and a group of other people around me, around, I shouldn't say around me, but like Mae Takahashi and various people in the Fresno chapter, we started pushing more and more to get people interested in redress and to contribute money to the Legacy Fund so that we could push that program in Washington, D.C.

CK: Just to clarify, when you began helping on redress, was that in 1970, when Edison Uno, or can you pinpoint the time when you got actively involved?

FH: Let's see... it was about 1970 or a little after.

CK: Did you go to every convention?

FH: Just about, just about.

CK: So you would have probably attended the convention in '70 that was in Chicago?

FH: I didn't go to Chicago.

CK: Oh, you didn't. Then, so then the following biennium, for two or three bienniums it was again voted as a resolution. So apparently is that when you became involved?

FH: Yes.

CK: Okay, thank you.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.