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SY: And what kind of people did you attract to EO9066? What was the membership like?

PS: It was a small membership. We didn't have many people. Min Tonai was one of our first members.

SY: And they were people who were not necessarily aligned with the JACL?

PS: That's right.

SY: Completely, not aligned.

PS: Some were some weren't.

SY: Some were.

PS: But what touched this whole thing off was on April of 1995 we had a meeting at the community center open to everybody in southern California. Min Tonai was there, Clarence Nishizu came up from Orange County, of course we had the Pacific Citizen out. One of the people was Gail... I forget her name but she was on staff at the JACL. We had, the main person was Edison Uno who came out and in that book you'll see the article in the Rafu about the meeting. We had... he came down from up north. We had Bob Ronka who was city councilman, and we had (Edwin) Hiroto who was administrator at a hospital. So it was a great meeting, we had about maybe not two hundred people but they came from all over the southern California, it was historic. And I would say the people who showed up of course were -- basically you would think that they were in favor but there was a small contingent of people who were opposed and they spoke up.

SY: And Edison Uno was in fact, he was with the JACL then, right?

PS: Yeah, I first well, he went to the meeting, the national meeting advocating redress, he was the first one, okay, he wanted a community fund which didn't fly because when we got organized one of the things we did was we circulated questionnaires in the community to find out what people wanted. And people wanted individual payments, you know, understandably. Said, "Since individuals were affected we need to be compensated individually." So we did that. I remember going to an Amache reunion, it was held at the Miyako Hotel in San Francisco back in about '76 or '77, and I asked the organizer of the reunion, it was very well attended, we had seven hundred people there. I asked him if I could circulate the petition or circulate the questionnaire to find out. I felt very bad because they guy said he met with his committee and they decided against it. But I felt bad because I felt strongly that it needed to done so I went up there and I circulated it anyway unofficially. The reason I felt bad is the guy had a heart attack a few weeks after that, I think coincidental but...but anyway so that was good.

SY: You were the only person who was sort of involved in this committee that took this on at the reunion?

PS: Yeah, right and he didn't want to get involved in anything like that. So it was an indication, it's just one hint that it was not something that would be largely supported by the community. But once we got going, people got on board and it was good to see. So we came up with these surveys that went into the Rafu and we got a reading and the vast majority of people wanted to go forward with it. But one of the things that I think I told you about this letter that Maggie Ishino, Maggie whatever her name is, writes for the Rafu.

SY: Just recently.

PS: She says, "Young people, what do they know about the terms concentration? They weren't even there." But I have to point out to her that it was the young people gave all of their... who provided the impetus, the energy for going ahead with the redress. If we left up to the old people it never would have happened.

SY: Although at the time, you and Paul were not necessarily the young, among the youngest people involved were you?

PS: Yeah, we were pretty old. Paul was in his late forties and I was in my late thirties.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.