<Begin Segment 24>

BF: Well, but you know, at the conference when I would ask people why they thought ultimately the Civil Liberties Act passed, because it had so many things stacked against it, the comment I kept hearing coming up that surprised me was people saying because, the justness of it was so right. Because there was no other way really you could take it.

CK: Yeah, I don't know what --

BF: For someone who's cynical, it was, you know, surprising.

CK: I don't know what percentage -- if you want to put a percentage on it -- that worked. But you heard you know, some of the back, behind the beltway scenes of what happens in terms of getting people to support it. I mean, there could be many things. Senator Inouye himself -- now this gets into appropriations -- but an example is, he called in his chits. Now they refer to that as you know, "You owe me because I helped you on this bill." There's that going on. And you don't know exactly what made a person vote for it. Sometimes it's just, the leadership says, "This is an issue we need to support. Some, like those congressmen who are in states where there are no constituent Nikkei. Then it took maybe just one Nikkei, finding that one, this is for Grace Uyehara, of the national JACL was important. To locate somebody in Georgia who knew and could talk to Pat Swindall, who was very important to the passage. And she met with him and we have, we've been able to videotape that meeting, you know, recalling Pat Swindall and that he supported it. And as Grant says, he was a born-again Christian, but he had certain ties with the, I don't know quite how it fit in, but the abortion, anti-abortion group or whatever. But all these very many facets of things enter into it and just the pure altruistic principle that it was justice... I'm with you, I'm cynical to the extent that I don't think, I think that did play a part, but maybe not as hundred percent as one would think.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.