<Begin Segment 26>

BF: Okay, this is sort of a big question. I want to ask you, in hindsight, do you think the Civil Liberties Act accomplished the ultimate goals, the big goals of getting redress? And you can sort of decide what those goals are yourself.

CK: I don't know, phrasing it as getting redress...

BF: Accomplished?

CK: Because redress was a process... but did it accomplish what we wanted? Actually, I was thinking about that because I questioned, when we talked with Mike Lowry, I wonder if there could have been some other way to accomplish redress, not necessarily monetary, individual. We did have in the past the social security and the federal service, the addition of the time to our earnings credit and so forth. They didn't make a lot of difference, but at least it was a sign of the government acknowledging it. And then we had the "American Promise" which was acknowledging the rescission of E.0. 9066 and acknowledging that, the loyalty of Japanese Americans. But as somebody pointed out, "That was not an apology," and you reread that and yes, it doesn't constitute an apology, it's an admission that it was a wrong, but...

Oh, as I was saying, as I was talking, asking Congressman, or Mike Lowry now, I guess, how he viewed it, I said, could there have been, say, I mean, just taking an example, there could be, I guess, all kinds of things. But, lifetime medical for internees on the presumption that the camp had damaged them physically. I think there are many people who can validly claim that the treatment they received in the hospitals as such, whether that would -- the reason I asked him that was because we saw some ugliness in the monetary. I mean people, for instance, I'd see one of the questions of people who didn't support it in the beginning and yet when it came to pass, first in the line kind of thing as if it were their due, in terms of, "I earned it because I was in camp." Not realizing that when they were asked to help in this years and years of struggle, they couldn't, they couldn't lift a finger. That, that was excusable. But some of the other ugliness I talk about is we've heard that there were families that deliberately left out other family members in reporting, you know, when you report who's all in your family. Because there were some family problems, or there was some family dissension. There were some feelings of, "Where's my check?" You know, this kind of stuff. And it was kind of disheartening to see that. That was, you know, the money part of it. But Mike's answer was that, the same thing, when you go to court it's damages and we're talking about monetary. That's what our system, how it's based. And he didn't see any other way to do it. And the fact that it was individual was helpful because it wasn't just a block grant and many people would not have had any benefit or whatever from it.

But as to whether it accomplished what we were looking for, I think it did in the sense -- as we said in talking about this -- how it brought out the feelings. How it finally, people were able to, I think, put closure to the whole thing. I mean, it keeps going on. I mean, like these things, it keeps coming up, but I think it puts closure to the emotional part of any bitterness that at least the government apologized. At least there was admission by vast numbers of people that it was wrong. That you know, there wasn't disloyalty. I mean, being incarcerated, the implication that there was something that we had to be incarcerated for. You wiped that out. And so I think, I think that yes, it did. There might be, there might have been some other things that could have been better maybe. But I think essentially our goals will be met and this is ongoing, too. I mean, we're still talking about it so you know, there is no point at which we say it... 'til we are gone I guess. And maybe it'll take historians many more years to... that's, that's a question I have: will this be forgotten, or will this remain in history? Will it be said that in 1942 there were 120,000 people sent to concentration camps? But along with it, will it be said that through the efforts of this small minority, the government did apologize. I think that's an important part of history.

BF: Yeah, both were pretty amazing events. First the incarceration and then secondly, the amazing success of this minority population with no real political power or leverage, not like this huge base of money, to do this and accomplish what they did. And yet it seems as though the larger population knows very little about both these events still.

CK: Still and I think that's too because as new generations come along, they aren't aware of it and probably more people who were adults you know, during that period would be more, can relate to it more. But you wonder how long or how far reaching it will last. Some people claim it will go down in history and others, I guess you can get cynical about it saying, "So who would care, fifty years from now, a hundred years from now?" I think in our time, though, it is something that I think was unbelievable in thinking that it could be accomplished. 1.65 billion in Congress. That's amazing.

BF: During deficit years.

CK: Yeah, right, yeah.

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.