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TI: William, you just finished talking a little bit about your meetings in Seattle and Frank Chin and about what actually happened. Since then, you've learned more about what was going on back then, and what Frank was doing. Can you explain some of that for us?

WH: Well, Frank was very much into public relations, demonstrations. One of the things that we worked on, we were gonna do, but never happened, was we were going to announce the establishment of NCJAR at a event at the Minidoka, site of the Minidoka camp. And that was... what we were going to do is to take a guard tower and burn it down symbolically. And then everyone says, "Well, you can't do that because it's a fire hazard." So Frank says okay, then we'll just take it down piece by piece and throw it into a fire or something like that. But that didn't work out. There was a lot of counterpressure from the Idaho JACL, so we just went ahead and announced the formation of the (NCJAR). You know, it was a great idea and it was going to be done on ABC and all that stuff.

I think that from my own perspective from what happened in the movement is, after a point, the media does catch up with you, and you do do a lot of media things that have absolutely, there's no planning, no organization and it's probably fairly wide-reaching. I think a lot of people don't understand the impact of talk radio, for example. I did talk radio all over the country. You know, they do it by calling you up and then hooking you up. I did it all over the country. Some of them I did at the sites, but most of them were by remote hook up and I did them in places like Portland and Seattle, Texas, Phoenix, various places. A lot of them were repeat. They liked the response, you know, they always want the lights to go on, people calling in, and so they would do repeats. But I don't know what effect those have, but they would happen after every event, after a major event. And we didn't initiate them, they initiated, always, they'd always call. I wasn't that interested in doing them. And one of the things I found out was that it took its toll on me, so I'd limit myself to one a day. If I did two a day I would just be so worn out. It's the adrenaline, because a lot of hostility you deal with. But I think that's part of what you have to do. I mean, I hadn't heard anyone else talk about that, so I'm just sort of wondering how much talk radio other people did, but I did quite a bit. And you really get down to the common man, and it's not real enlightening. But it's important because you know what people think and they respond to you. It's not hard to figure out. And some of the people, well, like there was a guy in New York who was just absolutely terrible, he was very hostile, racist. I guess in New York you can be openly racist, it was just, it was amazing to me. But I was prepared for it. But I think I did two interviews and after the second one, I called up the producer and said, "I never want to do an interview with this guy again because he's not fair." I don't mind people who are conservative, but I want equal time. I don't want him dominating everything and just, you know, making me look like a fool. I want equal time, and most of the people will give you equal time, even if they don't agree with you. But here, the guy was just, and he's one of the most popular talk show people in New York City. And he just got demoted recently, but he makes newspaper news when he gets demoted. But Grant was his name, Bob Grant. And I was just flabbergasted at the kind of stuff he'd get away with.

TI: Do you have any examples of, of some of things that he...

WH: Yeah. I was waiting for my time. I was listening, somebody had called in a question on Jesse Jackson, they called him Reverend Jesse Jackson, which of course is proper. And Grant says, "He's no Reverend, what are you calling him Reverend for?" And I'm sitting there, "Holy smokes. What is this guy? He's crazy." I mean, you hear that, you know, from the host. And I'm sitting there and says, oh. So the thing I learned is when you deal with people, you have to be very aggressive yourself. You cannot be a nice Japanese American. And you just have to go after them with a vengeance. And that tends to balance things off. But if you don't do that, you get chewed up. The same thing is true of Lillian Baker. You know, you just have to call her a liar. You're lying, or she's lying.

TI: And you think by doing that, they respect you more, or is that just the way you have to deal with them?

WH: They, I think Lillian Baker in particular takes advantage of the fact that most Nisei are polite and they don't respond in kind. But I figured out that the only way to deal with her is to respond in kind. You tell the truth, but be very candid about the truth. If she's lying, just say, "You're a liar," and cite your reasons why. But don't be polite, because they just walk all over you if you are.

But anyway, with, the other thing with Frank Chin was that he also introduced me to the idea of this Chinese god, Kwan Kung. I don't know how to pronounce Chinese, but that's the way I pronounce it. Who is the, he's the god of various things. One, he's the god or keeper of the cash register, I found out, in most Chinese restaurants, red-faced god. And he has, in his armaments, he has a weapon of some sort, a sword and a pen. It's a combination of fighting with the pen. And I thought, gee, that's a nice metaphor, to fight with a pen. And I think that's one of those things that we did in our branch of the redress movement. I did a lot of writing. I wrote for newspapers. I wrote for the New YorkNichibei. I didn't get paid for it. You know, I'd write... I got very friendly with the editor and she asked me if I'd do a story. You know, I'd go to hearings and she'd ask me, "Well, would you mind doing a story on it?" and I'd say sure. So I'd write, wherever I went, went to a hearing, I'd do a story and I'd get published. And that's important, too. And that's one reason why I did the book in '84. I said, well, it's about time we did a book, and a newsletter and stuff like that, just to keep people informed. Writing is a very, very powerful thing. People say, well, you know, just this and that. But television is fine, but it's very transient. You see it and it's gone, then you see something else. I mean, you know, your attention span is just real limited. But writing, if you take the time to do the reading, has a different kind of an effect. I think it's a little bit more enduring. And it's something people can use and you can reach a lot of people that way, too. You don't reach as many as television, but I think it has more of an impact.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.