<Begin Segment 24>

RD: To switch just a little, to what degree, if at all, did your experience with Japanese American redress influence your participating in a campaign for Ukrainian Canadian redress later, and did you take any lessons?

OK: Yes. I guess my being involved with the Japanese Canadian redress made me far more sensitive to what happened to Ukrainians and others in the First World War. That when Lubomyr and others first came to Ottawa, I wasn't overly sympathetic, but I was, I became more sympathetic and aware because of my involvement with the Japanese Canadian redress. What had happened to Japanese Canadians in part happened because of what had happened in the First World War. If you could do it once, you could do it a second time. If you could do it a second time without any recognition and apology and acknowledgement of what you had done, then it could happen a third time. I think the only thing that will keep us from doing what we've done on two occasions in a wartime situation is because we have, as a country and as a people, recognized something. And we can stand up and point out that this happened in 1914 and it then again happened in 1941. Now, are we going to let it happen in 2020? Knowing what we know, what we did to those people in those circumstances, the fact that it's now in the history books, it's now in the curricula of schools, that people won't go through an educational process in Canada like I did being totally unaware of this having happened.

I mean, and I think that because I was so heavily involved in the Japanese Canadian redress, when I was called and asked if I would be involved with the endowment committee, I didn't hesitate. I said, "Yes, this is something that I've got to do because it is another building block to see that things like this don't happen again. And anything that we do as a country or countries to raise awareness, to make people knowledgeable about governments doing this to their people, is the only way we're going to prevent it from happening in the future. Can it happen in the future? Absolutely. The capacity to create hysteria is unfortunately real. I mean, when you think back and look at what happened to Japanese Canadians when all kinds of authorities said, "You don't have to, these people are not a threat, they are not a concern. They're loyal to this country." But the hysteria that overtook the politicians and some very selfish individuals who saw a great benefit in what... and I'm probably maybe being unjustly cruel to some people, that I think some people very much sought benefits out of what could happen. And I think back and say, well, if you can override what the security services are saying, what the military is saying, what the police are saying and still persuade politicians that they've got to do what they did, I think that the fact that nobody knew what happened in the First World War, or that so few people knew, and that the government did a very good job, in my judgment, of deliberately covering it up, that is less likely to happen now because more people know about what we did as governments. And we can point to things. We can say, "Look at what we did to Ukrainians and others in the First World War, what we did to Japanese Canadians in the Second World War, and no, we're not gonna do that to Muslims now, and here's why we aren't going to do it." I think there are a great many more people who are aware of all these issues than were in 1941. There were some very prominent people who stood up and argued against what the government was doing, but they were such a small minority that their voices were lost in the wilderness. And I hope that won't be true in the future. I hope there'll be a great many more Roger Daniels standing up and saying things than there were in the past. But can it happen? Yes, it can happen, I mean, and that's, in the last analysis, you can't outline hysteria. You can't outlaw bigotry. I mean, it can raise its ugly head.

RD: And stupidity.

OK: And stupidity. We've all seen it happen, and I despair. And I watch governments, even to this day, I watch my government, the way it's treating Omar Khadr in Guantanamo. I mean, give me a break. I mean, why would you do what you're doing? Unless you're doing it for very crass, short-term political reasons, and if you are, you should be condemned from the highest reaches. And now that's starting to happen. Fortunately, you're seeing things in Canada that you didn't see forty years ago. I mean, The Globe and Mail. When I mention going there to talk to the editorial board and in effect being treated as this, "Why is this person even here? Get him out of here, let's get on to something really important," to where they write editorials condemning the government for what they're doing to Khadr. And that's a change. That's a dramatic, there's been important changes that have happened in Canada, and I don't want to not recognize those. I think that we as a people have become more understanding and I think more accepting of differences. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. And I, the one thing that I will never continue to stop doing is to get Canadians to quit sitting on their high horses of some sort of moral superiority, particularly in comparison to the United States. That's still there, and it's still there in a way it shouldn't be.

RD: Well, it's very difficult to live next to a monster. [Laughs]

OK: Well, I prefer to call it an elephant, and we're the mouse. [Laughs]

RD: But it's... you got anything else? [Addressing TI]

TI: No, this has been fabulous.

RD: Yeah, I thought this was very nice.

OK: Well, I want to thank the both of you for affording me this opportunity.

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