<Begin Segment 9>

WH: And then they were then working on the, this full page ad or half page ad in the Washington Post to attack Hayakawa, respond to Hayakawa's statements about redress. And I supported that and we had press conferences in Chicago, and it was very well-organized. They had press conferences all over the country, and I was in charge of the one in Chicago and it was very successful. The only thing that was interesting about that press conference, however... we held the conference in front of a mural that had been painted by a Chicago muralist depicting the whole Japanese American experience. Immigration, and then the camps were real big, you know, the names of all the camps, the barracks and so forth and some sort of real optimistic thing about the future, I don't know, didn't understand. But the camp part was very dramatic, and that's where we held the press conference, right in front of that mural. And the reporters, they didn't care about Hayakawa at all. [Laughs] What they were interested in was what happened in the camps... they saw all these, this mural, and you know, taking pictures of the thing and taking the cameras up and so forth and interviewing us. So, it was a huge media success, but it wasn't on Hayakawa. [Laughs] I thought that was real interesting. Hayakawa was just sort of like an excuse for doing it. Because they weren't interested in Hayakawa. "Hayakawa? Who the hell's Hayakawa?" He used to live in Chicago, but they were interested in the camps. So you know, you just sort of go with the flow.

TI: So this is one of your first dealings with the press.

WH: Yes. And it was very successful, we got all three major ABC outlets -- ABC, NBC, CBS outlets -- to show up, and the two newspapers. So it was a real, real success. I've never been in anything that successful.

TI: And so these press conferences were coordinated from Seattle, from...

WH: Well, this, this particular one was because it was on the Hayakawa ad. And so, and the whole thing went off pretty well. We got a group of people together and they answered, fielded questions and so forth. So it worked out real well.

And then after that was over, then I went to Seattle and met the people there, they took me out to dinner. And I talked to... my contact there was a brother of my brother-in-law, my wife's sister's husband's brother. I call him my brother-in-law squared. And he's an old time Seattleite, JACL'er, Aaron Nagaoka. He says, boy, he's never... I stayed with him, and he said, boy, he's never seen so much activity. He took me to all the meetings. He says he's never seen this much activity going on in Seattle. You know, ever since he'd been in Seattle. And I didn't know. I thought this was sort of normal you know, holding these meetings and so forth, I met with these people. And then we went down to Emi Somekawa's place, near Puyallup, or maybe it is Puyallup. Anyway, she was living down there, we went down there the next day and had lunch or something. You know, met all these people and they were talking about it, and they formed the... I think Frank Abe and Karen Seriguchi came up with the name, National Council for Japanese American Redress. And they asked me to lead it and I said, well, I didn't care for the idea of leading it. Because I says, "Well, it looks like the leadership is in Seattle." So I went back and I said, "Give me a couple of weeks and I'll let you know."

TI: Going back to these meetings, they were there to you know introduce you to all the people and were they sort of recruiting you to be leader? Were they sort of prepping you, sort of, to...

WH: I think so, yeah. Well, they were sort of sizing me up. So I met Tomio Moriguchi. I met a lot of the leaders. Ron Mamiya, this was before he became a judge. And I remember Henry Miyatake took me home. I think it was when we arrived. They took me out to dinner and we had a long dinner and then he took me over to Nagaoka's place. And while he was taking me over, he was telling me about his divorce, which was, my god, it was just really a disaster. But anyway, that's how that whole thing began. It was very, very much up in the air. And all during this, prior to this, I'd been getting intimations via Michi Weglyn that Frank Chin wanted to get me to lead this thing, become a leader and so forth. She was telling Frank, "Well, why don't you call Hohri directly instead of dealing with me?" And I didn't... Frank was supposed to be in Seattle, but he got there after I left. They wanted me to stick around, I said I can't stick around because I had other commitments in Chicago, and I was working and everything else.

TI: What were your first impressions? You were there, so it's a whirlwind of meetings and talking to people, what...

WH: Yeah, I thought that they had a good group. They had a lot of experience, they'd thought the thing through. They seemed to be pretty well-organized. I just didn't think I was the appropriate person. But then I talked to Frank Chin, after he got out there he called me and he basically went through all the negatives of each individual and said why he didn't think they should lead. And I think he was basically correct. You probably know these people better than I do, like Shosuke Sasaki and Henry Miyatake and I forgot who else. But, so I think he convinced me more than anyone, anyone else that, yeah, maybe I should do this. But I really thought it was coming out of him, not the Seattle group. [Laughs] I didn't find that out 'til much later.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.