<Begin Segment 24>

TI: You mentioned Edison's death. What year did Edison pass away?

KK: He passed away, and I knew you were going to ask me and I was trying to think of what year it was... 1960...

TI: Well, if you can't remember that's okay, but I guess --

KK: It was the year my daughter was born. I'm trying to think... she is forty... because I had to take Trisha with me -- no, no that was my father's funeral, that's, that's... Edison died before my father died.

TI: It would be after 1972, though.

KK: Yeah.

TI: And before redress passed.

KK: Right, right.

TI: Which, and redress passed in 1988.

KK: I think he died in 1974. When did we celebrate the U.S....

TI: Bicentennial?

KK: Bicentennial is 19 --

TI: '76.

KK: 1976 he died, then. 'Cause it was that year that he died.

TI: So even that was very early in the redress movement.

KK: Oh, yeah.

TI: Because, even thought the JACL national had passed resolutions...

KK: They really hadn't worked on it.

TI: They hadn't worked on it 'til then. So do you have a sense that, was he frustrated during those early years?

KK: Oh, yeah.

TI: When he'd be out there talking. And how would he show his frustration?

KK: Well, he'd just talk more, find more people to talk to.

TI: But then, even though he's frustrated, my sense is people were gradually coming around.

KK: Yes.

TI: 'Cause it was, again, when I read, the, you know, the kind of historical documents, it appears most of the Japanese American community was against redress.

KK: That's right.

TI: But if you ask them now, everyone was for it, but if you look at what the community press and people were saying, they weren't...

KK: Yeah, they said, "No, no, keep it quiet, keep it quiet," you know, "you shouldn't ask for it," this and that. But he told all these young people that he was talking to, especially these people who were going to be lawyers, you know, he said if you look at the law, if they took you into prison today, and it was a mistake, when they let you go, they would give you money and they would give you a letter of, you know, to clear your record. Says, the same thing for us. And it made sense.

TI: And it was the lawyers later on, really towards the late '70s, when documents were uncovered by people like Aiko Herzig, then it really started accelerating because there they could really have hard evidence that indeed there was wrongdoings.

KK: Wrongdoings, yeah. That was really what helped, was when they found in San Diego that, the box with that document in it said that was covered up...

TI: But my sense is that Edison did a lot to prepare the community to take those steps, that in some ways he had the... what's the right word? I mean, he prepared them almost mentally to accept the challenge. And when these documents did appear, then things went more smoothly.

KK: Yes. And then a lot of these young lawyers had talked to him and knew what he had said and it made sense, and so then they start working on it really. And my sisters went on their own to Washington, D.C. to lobby for this. Nobody knows that, 'cause they went on their own.

TI: And who were they lobbying? Congress?

KK: Uh-huh, mainly Congress. My sister Hana, she did it all on her own.

TI: In terms of siblings, was Edison the first of the siblings to die?

KK: Oh, no, no. No. Let's see... Stanley died first, and then Bob, and then Edison.

TI: I see. Going back to Edison, what was the impact on the redress movement when, when Edison passed away?

KK: They just, I think, then the people he had talked to start picking it up, you know, young lawyers. And, you see, once I was married I was kind of out of the family, and so I didn't get to know a lot of what was going on in the California, 'cause I lived in Michigan, then I lived in Virginia and I lived in Hawaii. But I spent short time, one year, in California, when my husband went to UC Berkeley, but otherwise the family kind of kept to themselves and I wasn't part of the family anymore. And it wasn't until I came and I'm, start looking for all these and I'm getting all these papers in my house and I'm starting to get ready for this reunion that I'm reading all this, and I thought, "My goodness, I didn't know all of this went on, and the feelings that were going on in the various families." And it's opened my eyes quite a bit. Now I understand a lot of what went on and why it went the way it went.

TI: So a lot of fighting within the family. And what were the issues that people would fight about?

KK: No, there weren't, there wasn't fighting. There was just, mainly... you see, my father didn't have an income after he came out of camp, only social security, I think, he got. And then my, when my mother passed away, which was when I was sixteen, so he had to live with different families, and so they'd move him around to the various families. And some of the families liked to have him there, and some of the families didn't like to have him there and they felt bad about it. And he even came to Hawaii and stayed with us, and we enjoyed him, and I think he really liked it and liked being with us. But some of the families, he was just a burden. And he knew it. And he was always trying to make money to send to Buddy, knowing that Buddy was having a hard time. So his life was very difficult.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.