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SY: And what was your relationship to the JACL in general? Was the JACL also supporting the same causes?

HK: Yeah, I think so, but see, the JACL is a very establishment organization as we know, but at the same time they were some more progressive members of the group. And I think our chapter I would say were members of that very progressive, almost radical group. And we tried to make some changes within JACL and maybe to some degree there was some change, definitely some change. Because if you had to meet the needs of your community you had to change, so we got involved in other issues as well besides just the human rights and Vietnam War and ethnic studies, although those are ongoing issues.

SY: So when did the redress issue first come before you? When was that?

HK: I knew that JACL got into that whole discussion about asking for reparations, redress. There was Edison Uno from San Francisco, and we got to know Edison very well from our mutual interests and the movement. I know he proposed at some JACL convention many years ago that we do this, this redress, reparations we should do something to get compensation or recognition or something.

SY: Was that just about the same time that you were sort of--

HK: Probably a little bit before when some of those... Edison Uno to his credit kind of sowed some seeds fairly early in the minds of Japanese, the JACL leadership and members too, and eventually began to grow and develop and evolve. And it ended up with the whole movement to bring about some kind of redress. You probably remember some of the discussions we had about how best to do this, some say we should just go directly to the government and ask them for reparations because of what happened to us during World War II and make the case there directly to the government. And others said well, yeah, that may not be terribly productive, maybe we should think of other strategies. So one of the kind of compromises, I guess you might call it, was to have a commission, something in between going directly to the government and asking for reparations. But forming a commission also would provide a lot of information, more information for us to understand the experience of all the incarcerees from all kinds of experience. It would also serve as a historical legacy. So there was an internal discussion about should we go directly to the government or should we go this commission route? Eventually the commission route won the day and we did that, this was back in the mid-'80s I guess it was, yeah, the mid-'80s.

SY: And what was your position? Did you take a role in that?

HK: Yes, we got very interested in this of course, and I was still helping with the Pacific Southwest, volunteering with the Pacific Southwest district.

SY: This was right after the Title II?

HK: Not too long afterwards. Then I joined the redress committee for the Pacific Southwest District Council, so we became active with that whole effort.

SY: And this redress committee was a combination of all different chapter JACL?

HK: I don't know about all chapters, but a good number of chapters had representatives to come into this redress committee. So we began talking about how best to approach this, we had a lot of discussions about should we go directly -- the internal discussion within JACL -- should we go directly to the government, should we have this commission hearing or something else for that matter. So we began to explore some different possibilities, and then I guess eventually we got into the commission approach.

SY: And did you take a position personally on this whole issue?

HK: I was kind of ambivalent initially. I thought we're angry, we're mad, we want to go to the government, "You SOBs, you owe us, you did a lot of damage to us, you owe us." I guess I thought, well, I guess there were some problems with that. You're going to get some reaction and counter forces working, and so maybe the commission hearing might be a better way to go to establish the grounds for asking for reparations. Maybe that perhaps is a better way. So in hindsight that was probably an okay strategy.

SY: And do you remember the friction within the JACL at the time?

HK: Yes, you mentioned Seattle. I know there was more of a little more activist or militant group in Seattle who said, "Yeah, we should go directly to the government and forget this commission stuff. That's just kind of stalling the whole matter." And others felt the same way that we should just go right to the government. Well, eventually the commission hearing thing won the day, then Pacific Southwest district, the reparations committee, redress committee, I became chairman of that committee. And so I helped... right during, this is about the mid-1980s when we had hearings in Los Angeles. Well, first of all we had to get the commission approved, so that took some lobbying and working with our legislators.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.