<Begin Segment 19>

BF: What amazes me is how a community that for so many years wouldn't talk about it in their own families was willing to talk about it so publicly. Especially at a time when it still wasn't sure that redress would ever be successful and a lot of people were doubting whether it was worth the effort. What did you, how did you get people to testify?

CK: Well, the things that I did say, you know, that the public events and...

BF: But to get people to even go to the mock hearings and...

CK: Yeah. Well, I think people hearing these others testify, said to themselves, "I have a story, too, to tell. I want to tell my story." And so when it got to that point, then there was a big, a wave of feeling that, "I want to tell my story, too." And so it was amazing. Many people held this off. And as I told one of the small groups at the conference, it was in a sense, my own release, too, because I had been fairly stoic because I didn't have a really tragic experience. But one morning of the hearings I was having breakfast with Bill Marutani, with, I think it was Nobi Chan. And Bill was still at that time -- this was, you know, before the recommendations -- he was still questioning the need for monetary and how much and why and so forth, and he may have just been testing, you know. And maybe he felt down deep, it was correct, but he expressed some doubts there, when we were having breakfast. And then I started to tell them about the need. I said, "You may feel that everyone is comfortable now and not needing the money, but do you realize there are many Isseis who are on just social security and they are having problems?" And just thinking about it and talking to him about it and all this build up that we'd been going through came out and I just broke down. It was terribly embarrassing. Here we were at the hotel and I was... so anyway... [Laughs]

BF: Were you thinking about your own parents because they were living with you, well, not on social security, they...

CK: No, not my personal, but just the whole sphere of the injustice. And, how it was so wrong. And having heard these very touching stories, that it just kind of all built up, and it just came out then. So I call that my catharsis there, I guess. So, I guess, essentially people did want to talk about it, but it's a lot like my circumstance. Nobody asked me. Nobody wanted to listen. And finally here was someone who wanted to listen and so the stories came in. And you know, some of these typed testimonies were lengthy because we were limited to the five minutes so they had prepared a shorter version, but the long... in fact I have a whole box full of testimonies down there that I still...

BF: Oh really, from here in Seattle?

CK: Yeah.

BF: Wow.

CK: That I need to go over sometime eventually, when I get to that point. But, and I think the whole area of, it was educational from both our side and the commission. The commission went up to Alaska and had one hearing. They didn't realize all the circumstances of the tragedy of the Aleut situation and they found that out when they were there. And I guess to some of them, they had no inkling of all the, the upset, the total disruption of lives that had happened. You know, I mean, you look at it from a third party view, you think oh, they went to camp, they are out and they're fine. You know, they don't realize the families that were totally disrupted. This one woman in California, who, her husband... oh, well the story is too long and it's going to be told in other places, but some lives were just tragically, tragically ruined.

BF: You said that it educated both sides -- the commission and the community. What, what do you think the community took away from the hearings?

CK: Oh, I think the very fact that they were able to talk about it. They were able to find out that other people really, there were people who suffered so much greater hardships than they. You know, most of 'em, like ourselves, we went through camp, we lost education and this kind of thing. But some of the physical and I guess there were some mental illnesses caused by that and very long range hardships that stemmed from that. I think it was an education to many of us that, hey, we didn't fare so badly. Look at all these other people.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.