<Begin Segment 29>

SF: Related issues, the one about redress, again in our survey we found that the Buddhists on average were less involved in redress than the JA Christians. So, kind of, this relates to all of the things you were pointing out. And so with that kind of complex social issue -- one, did the Buddhists, did BCA take a position on redress? And what are the relative issues that need to be thought about in terms of redress, for example? It's in the past, etcetera and so forth, but perhaps we need to change legislation, or change consciousness etcetera and so forth. How does all -- how do you grapple with all those complexities in a sense?

RI: Well I don't. [Laughs] Oh, I don't recall if BCA took a position on that. See our whole teaching is one of gratitude for all the undeserved things that we have, not praying for things we don't have. And so I think that's very much underlying. And so whenever you're given redress or reparations, if it's asking for something for yourself, it seems very, well of course egotistical and self-serving. Maybe, there was a concern that others who really suffered should get it. But by the time it happened, most of them were gone. And it's people like me who (had) left at eight months old that, in a way -- and not to say that we don't deserve it -- but certainly it's not, has, it's not the same meaning as somebody who went through the tremendous dislocation and lost everything. And it goes back to what I was talking earlier about: a Buddhist attitude of just letting go and moving on. There's very few people left who really lived through it. And there's certainly more pressing issues today that should concern us.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.