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SY: Well, I want to back up a little because I always think of you in terms of being very active with unpopular causes. Would you say that it goes back to your involvement in the JACL?

PS: Yeah, it's involved with redress.

SY: You talk about a little bit about when you started with the JACL and what prompted you to get involved with the JACL?

PS: Well, it was largely a social thing at first. They have a Christmas party and back in the early '70s our kids were young, they were eleven or twelve and so we took them to the Christmas party. And then I got on the board and then redress came up and Paul got on the board, he became district governor of JACL. Talk about somebody who supported unpopular causes, I mean, he was on board for atom bomb survivors. He realized that people who were involved in the atom bombing, came over here, they didn't get support from our government. Our government wouldn't pay for any of their treatment. They had to go back to Japan to get treatment. And so he was one of the pioneers in that area. The issue of an apology to the draft resisters came up and he sponsored a couple of meetings there and he gets no credit for it but he was behind that. Talk about an unpopular cause in the community. But he finally got JACL to apologize for the treatment they gave to draft resisters. And then it turns out that his daughter we thought was a lesbian, it turns out she was bisexual, she came out to him, so being the kind of guy he took it in stride, no problem, she's doing fine. She was with this woman in a lesbian relationship, she dropped that, an Asian Japanese, another woman, she marries this black guy, she gets a divorce from the black guy, the guy was a principal of a school so he got her involved, she's now principal of the school, she's doing fine.

SY: So Paul, would you say that he was sort of a mentor to you?

PS: Yeah, very definitely. I'm not the initiator type, I'm a good follower, but it's somebody who inspires me like that I'll follow.

SY: So when you were in the JACL it was Paul who sort of pulled you along?

PS: Yeah, he's the one who got this EO9066 started.

SY: And that is maybe you can talk a little bit about EO9066 was.

PS: Paul was right on. He knew that we needed to start an organization for redress but there were a lot of anti-JACL people out there who would never come near us if we said... if we connected it all with JACL. So this was an independent organization that we got started, we had meetings, we became incorporated, he went through all of that. I remember going to Century City and meeting with the pro bono attorneys to get that going. Then we had meetings where we honored people who were active. Once of the main people that we had come down and we honored them at Keiro Center in Boyle Heights, Gordon Hirabayashi.

SY: And this was back in...

PS: The mid-'70s.

SY: Mid-'70s.

PS: Yeah, one of my claims to fame is that he stayed at this house just before he spoke.

SY: So you got to know him.

PS: Oh, yeah, great guy, he told us this story about this whole thing firsthand about how he was a student and his friends were able to roam freely after, but he had a curfew so he wanted to test the law. So he goes out on the streets after ten o'clock in Seattle, nobody even notices him, so he finally has to go to a policeman and say, "Hey, look, I'm Japanese, I shouldn't be out here." So the guy reluctantly took him in and then he brings him to the police station, the guys says, "There's no local law here, you don't belong here." So he calls around he finds out he belongs in Texas, this was in I read something recently about this, but so he has no way of getting to Texas so he first takes a bus to Salt Lake City. He hitchhikes down to Texas to go to the penitentiary, he goes into the office and the guy, the warden says, "Well, I don't have anything on you," he says, "come back." So he goes to movie and comes back the next day and they guys says, "Oh, yeah, I got your papers," so he starts to lock him up. So he's walking down the hallway being led to a cell and sees this guy coming toward him is kind of older guy who looks like he's Asian. Turns out it's his father who was arrested at the same time.

SY: Really?

PS: So they need... well, I don't know why he was in the penitentiary rather than being... but anyways, so it comes time to have his father get a hearing, he didn't speak English, so who do they bring in to interpret, they bring Gordon in.

SY: To interpret for his father.

PS: Just quite a story.

SY: That is quite a story.

PS: But he was a very great guy, very humble kind of guy.

SY: And what was, so during this period where you... when he came to speak what was his position?

PS: Well, no, we just honored him because of what, the stand he took.

SY: Oh, I see.

PS: And then we had Herbert Nicholson who was the Quaker who was very good to visiting people in Manzanar. He was dying of cancer but he came. We honored Wayne Collins, Jr., Wayne Collins' son.

SY: His father.

PS: Who was also an attorney. His father was gone but we honored him. We honored a guy by the name of George Knox Roth who was very helpful to us. So this was all done at Little Tokyo Towers, these others. The first one we did Gordon Hirabayashi was at --

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