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MN: Well, how did you feel when redress was actually won?

CO: Well, I didn't believe it. I mean, it was really difficult. But then, I compared it to the lawsuit, and I really thought that the lawsuit had a lot more legitimacy in that it was framed as a violation of our law and that that's the one that should have won, but we didn't win. So that was, at least with the congressional thing, there again, it was very educational, I think, for the nation. And I think $20,000 was such a token, piddling amount, but anyway... it was symbolic, you might say.

MN: Now, had NCJAR not filed that lawsuit and not almost won, do you think that Congress would have passed the redress bill?

CO: You know, who can say? I sort of believe that that was the prod for Congress, but we'll never know. We'll never know. It did attract a lot -- I mean, the lawsuit in Washington, the West Coast was hardly aware of it because it was all happening back there, but it attracted a lot. Because I know right after the hearings, we went out, and all the media was there. I know the media from Seattle came up and asked me, and I didn't know what to say. So I didn't make it on air, but that's okay. But they did pay attention to the lawsuit. And we had a great, I think we were there for three or four days or something, but Harry Ueno was there and Hannah Holmes was there, Michi was there, Michi and Walter Weglyn were there. In fact, there's this great photo, huh? Gordon was there, Gordon Hirabayashi, Fred Korematsu was there, and all these other people. So it was a historic gathering. And as we were seated in the Supreme Court, and they're very strict. They come around, and Gordon was reading a newspaper next to me, and this guy, proctor comes out and says, "Please do not read the newspaper," and things like that. So we all had to sit there very attentively for quite a while. And Antonin Scalia stood up and recused himself, and we heard Thurgood Marshall make remarks and things like that. Oh, but before that, there were a couple of rows of empty seats in the very front, like everybody else was seated and waiting. Man, Mike Masaoka came in with an entourage of people, and they got seated right in front. And I was thinking, "What kind of clout does this guy have that he gets a special seating right in the front at the Supreme Court?" Anyway, I never asked anybody about that, but it was such a show of power or show of himself, I suppose, I don't know. Anyway, so you never know about what things are going on.

MN: Did you ever see Mike Masaoka and William Hohri have any words?

CO: No. In fact, I hardly ever saw Mike Masaoka. I went to one JACL, one of their yearly. It was in Seattle, and this was at the time when the redress bill's... I said, "I have to look at this person after all I've heard about him and see him in action." And I did, and he was, the panel was on Japan-America Relations and Trade, and he got up there, dominated the whole discussion, got off on the 442nd, and they never hardly got to the trade issues, it seemed like. So I said, "Oh, this is the beast that we have been fighting with for all these years." Yeah, that's the kind of guy he was, I guess. And he was doing it for the home team because it was in Seattle and it was in front of the JACL there and everything. Yeah. So he was playing to the crowd.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.