<Begin Segment 18>

SY: I was just saying that for someone who wasn't there during that period of fighting for redress, it's hard to imagine but I know that the climate was probably really different than it is now. Everybody now thinks it was the best thing that ever happened to us but back then there were a lot of differing opinions. I mean, really to get involved in the redress movement was quite brave, would you say that it was kind of? But fighting for something like that when you got a lot of opposition in fact.

PS: No, I really didn't hear much opposition, really.

SY: But most --

PS: Not after a certain point.

SY: I was going to say but initially it was sort of a feeling of we can't do that or how is that possible. That will never happen.

PS: Frankly I had that feeling myself. It was something that I felt I needed to do because it had to be done. It's like getting into a fight that you know you're going to lose. But it's one you have to get in there and slog it out. It was just -- when Harry Kajihara is a friend of mine, he became interested in redress and he was chapter president for the Oxnard chapter and he became the national director during the time that the legislation was going through. And Harry's one of these kind of guys that he always comes across as being up, he's always optimistic. So I'd ask him how are things going, he says, "Great we're going to make it this time." I say, "Oh yeah, sure Harry."

SY: So you had your doubts.

PS: Yeah, so when it came about I just couldn't believe it, just amazing.

SY: Yeah, I was going to say what did you do to celebrate? I mean, that whole signing of the bill, do you remember that period what that was like? And was your mother still alive?

PS: Yeah.

SY: So she must have... was she at all?

PS: No, interesting I don't remember her being that vocal one way or the other on that really. I think part of it is that the Japanese are funny about money it seems. They don't feel comfortable accepting money for something like that. There are people even today I hear of people got the money, they turned it down. You know they just felt, the word in Japanese is kitanai, it was dirty to accept money. That's not something you do. I remember hearing Senator Hayakawa during a redress hearing saying, "Oh, this is so... it just makes my flesh crawl to have to accept, go to the government and ask." I think a lot of the younger people who have been involved in redress, they really were angry at him for saying that, but I think he really represented the gut feeling of a lot of Japanese. You know, they just didn't like the idea of asking somebody for money. But you know American society is... that's the way things go. We've gotten a lot of apologies in Congress before redress, apologies are cheap. But as soon as you attach money to it then people pay attention. I remember John Tateishi was saying that when we were involved in the '70s in redress he says, "I'd tell them about what we have in mind and they'd yawn. But as soon as we said we're asking for 25,000 dollars, they were on the phone, they wanted to know what's going on." In the same way I think you can tell American values by what it is that we honor in this society. We don't honor the people who quietly went to camp and were good citizens and proved our loyalty by going to camp. Who do we honor? We honor Korematsu, right, who deliberately defied the authorities and stayed out of camp. He gets honored by President Clinton by this Medal of Honor. What are the camps that we honor? We honor Tule Lake, Tule Lake is something, honor in the Pacific, the exemplary model. And think about those people renounced their citizenship, right? So we honor those kinds of people, people who don't go along, the people who fight, those are the people we honor. So right now even the draft, as much as we honor the 442nd and what they did which was important, I think we've come to honor the draft resisters too, for taking a stand of conscience.

SY: But there are still those who say that they're being shunned too. I mean, there's still that group, and largely, well, the JACL in some ways has maintained a rather conservative position on some of these things and Paul had a big part in the draft resisters and that did not come easily. Were you there during those discussions with the JACL?

PS: Yeah, I was on the board and coincidentally our chapter president who went to -- I think it was in Monterey - was Karl Nobuyuki who was national director during redress and he was not in favor of that apology.

SY: So there's still that group in the JACL that's conservative? But at the same time you feel important to be a part of it, right?

PS: Oh, yeah, sure, but there's a lot that we need to talk about.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.