<Begin Segment 23>

BF: What do you think were your main strengths as a lobbyist, I mean, sort of comparing your style, and who you are with other JACL'ers who were lobbying Congress at the time.

CK: Well getting back to the state. This was interesting because I went down once with Jerry Shigaki and we, we made an appointment with this one who was very, very negative and so I was telling him about the camp experience, what it did and, you know, fairly personal kind of things and I was getting a little emotional about it. And I turned and looked at, and Jerry was looking me like this, as if, "What is she saying?" [Laughs] But after we got through, and he, this legislator didn't commit, but he said he'd think about it. And we got out to the hallway and Jerry said, "You were really, you were really torn up about that, weren't you?" Or something like that, you know. Even to this day, at a JACL meeting, he said, "I worked with Cherry and she cried talking about redress." [Laughs] But that's the one advantage, being a woman and having experienced it, is you can let the emotion come out. A male, a man could not do that very easily, and I can't see any of these Nisei fellows going out and doing that. So, in a sense, it works for me, even though I really felt it, it helped, because it showed the depth of the feeling that we had.

Plus, when we were talking to Ron Sims recently on an interview, he said his colleagues would say, "You know, this is, that woman from Seattle, Cherry what's her name, that bill," you know. So it got to be that... I was down there so often, I guess. I said, no, I wasn't down there that often, but it got to be identified. That's one thing I've found. Get to the point of being an individual to them. Like with Al Swift in Everett. We went up, oh, time after time with different people. We used... and you know you can't get an appointment just by saying, "We'd like to talk about the redress bill." You have to have, after the first time and they put you off, then you have to have some reason for going there again. Well, we almost devised reasons. There was somebody who wrote to us and said they knew Al Swift, they knew a teacher -- they both know this teacher who was going to be honored, or died or something, but they had some link. And I said, "Well, Mayme, why don't you come with us the next time we go to see Al Swift?" So then on the basis of that, I got the appointment, saying there is an old schoolmate of Representative Swift who would like to see him, and so they made the appointment for him. But you had to -- they'd put you off, "Oh you've been here before, we've talked about it." So you have to figure out reasons or use a deadline. "There's going to be a committee vote, such and such a committee, and we need to see if you have any questions about that because that vote's coming up and you're going to have to vote on that." So different things like that. Or, you almost have to be creative.

But as I'm saying about being an individual, it got so, persistency is the other thing... so he knew me by name. Al Swift. I mean, I wasn't just one of the crowd. And one time his reasoning was so strange of why he opposed it. He would say, "Yeah, I support it but this $20,000, it trivializes it." And we said, "Well, how?" And said, "Well, it's not, it's not... it makes the injustice, the people who did this, it lets them off too easy." We couldn't figure that out. Well, then we'll ask for $100,000. [Laughs] But why would you oppose... if $20,000 is acceptable to us as a token, and we'd like to see the bill passed because then it's a token that, you know, Congress agrees. But he just couldn't get past that. And I think it was, he had an aide, a Sansei from Hawaii and he was mouthing what Senator Inouye had said initially, that it trivialized the event. But Representative Swift sort of put his own little personal quirk to that in saying, it wasn't... on the one hand he'd say it wasn't enough, but yet he wasn't willing to go more.

BF: Right. Just that far.

CK: So, and we're telling him we're the ones who say it's acceptable. Not... so I got a little irritated with him once and I said just that sort of thing. I said, "We're the ones that find it acceptable and why do you keep saying it's not on the basis of how it affects the people who did this?" Anyway, afterwards I thought, "Oh God, you don't speak that way to a representative when you're trying to get his support." So I worried about that and worried about that. And so Easter was coming up, so I thought, "Well I'll just do this." I went out and got a real nice plant and I went up to, to Everett and he wasn't there, but I left it with a nice card.

BF: So to his house?

CK: No, his office.

BF: Oh, okay.

CK: Yeah, because I wouldn't know where he lives. To his office and then his aide, I'd gotten to know her quite well. So anyway, she told him, I guess, you know, I'd brought it all the way up. But anyway it got to the point where he was calling me, "Cherry," you know, and this and that. And that works with all of 'em. If they begin to know you as a person, they know if they vote no, they're going to have to tell you they voted no. And so this is why, it's persistence, so that they know you. They know Becky. "Becky, you're the one that came down and asked for my support on this." You know, I have to think twice before I have to tell you that, no, I didn't vote for it. This is, this is the thing you see. Becky had been down several times, hadn't you, on that.

BF: Yeah, I think with Jerry. [Laughs]

CK: So anyway, that's one thing I found out about -- oh, and to indicate the personalization of lobbying if you might call it that. And I didn't get a chance to say this at the conference because my time ran out, but on the day of the vote, September 17th -- when Mineta had asked for that vote to be taken on that commemorating the anniversary of the Constitution -- that day, we were all kind of waiting and the phone rings. And then Don Bonker, who had been resisting all this time, said... he was all, I don't know, distracted, and he said, he was talking about he missed the vote. I said, "You mean the vote for the bill?" And he said, "No, I missed the committee -- I was in a committee meeting, I missed the vote for the Lungren amendment." Dan Lungren had submitted an amendment cutting out monetary and Don Bonker was saying, "I missed the vote and I didn't get a chance to vote 'no,'" and then he said, "But I'm gonna vote for the bill." And so I was surprised that he would call me and apologize for not, you know, missing that vote. Then later that day the phone rings and I pick it up and, "This is Al." Al? "Al Swift." And he says, "I wanted to let you know that I voted for the bill." I said, "Oh, thank you so much," and all that. But they get to know you. They get to know you're a constituent, you want to know if they voted for the bill. And so, this, I think it ties up to the fact that you've got to be more than just one individual of that group, that group that wants it. You have to make yourself known as a person. And the only way to do that is just get in their face. [Laughs]

BF: All the time.

CK: Get in their face and they want to get rid of you, kind of thing. But the whole experience of lobbying was just a tremendous experience. And I saw somewhere, I think Mineta had said that when you get a vote, how exhilarating it is. I didn't realize for that level, too, it's the same thing, and it, when you get a 'yes' vote, that's... another one, interesting, was Rod Chandler, he held out until the very day of the vote. And then that day, his aide called and said he was so impressed with the meeting, that Tomio and Tim Gojio and I had gone to meet with him, and at that meeting he had kept saying, "No, no." He had some objections and when we were leaving I said, "Well, Representative Chandler, could we tell our group that at least you'll..." And then he interrupted me and he said, "No," he says, "tell your group you went away disappointed." So he just cut us off and so, I thought, oh...

BF: It doesn't sound good.

CK: Yeah. It doesn't sound good and so as we were leaving and we were shaking hands and then I, when I shook his hands I made one last try. I said, "Congressman Chandler, when it comes to the vote, just remember that if nothing else, it's the right thing to do. Please remember that." And we left, you know. So then on that day, after his aide called and said that he's gonna vote for it. I had C-Span on and they were doing the proceedings and here I didn't see Swift, I didn't see any of them talking. Here's Congressman Chandler standing up there, on the podium saying, we must do this, etceteras, etceteras, that this is only just. And he said, "I thought about this for a long time and in my mind I had difficulty, but in my heart, it told me that I must do it because it's the right thing to do." [Laughs]

BF: [Laughs] Did you jump up?

CK: No, I just... no, it was, it was, I don't know how this is going to be used, but it was quite revealing that politicians are politicians. [Interruption] You know, it could have been there was word from the Republicans that, "Let's vote for this bill." There could have been somebody, his colleagues or Lowry or whatever saying, "Come on, you've got to vote for it." All these things can enter into it. [Interruption]

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.