<Begin Segment 31>

TI: And before you even contacted the Senator, did you talk to Kash about trying to do this?

SK: Yes, yes.

TI: And what did he say?

SK: Well, he said, "Go ahead if you can." First I wrote to Fred Matsumura. He was supposed to be my second-in-command from basic time so he said, "Yeah, go ahead," and he said, "That incident haunts me right through my life." So I said, "That's the reason, too, I want to get rid of this court-martial case against you guys." He gave me his permission. He says, "Yes, go ahead," and Kash said, "Go ahead," too. I wrote to Dan Inouye, and two years later he says, "Well, we did as much as we could, but we cannot do anything more." Oh, shucks, that really hurt me. I thought Dan would have much power to do something about it. And in the meantime I wrote to Patsy Mink and she did the same thing, to ask release from Kashino and Matsumura for their records to be taken out from the archives. Then same thing, the letter came (...) saying (they) looked into (the) files, but that area (of the archives) has been burned so there is most likely no record. And I don't know what happened, but Kashino's file went to him. The (papers) were singed, burnt, charred, but at least those, the records that we really wanted was there and --

TI: And this was much later. This was about ten years later, like 1995 --

SK: Yes, yes, that's right.

TI: -- that they got the records.

SK: That's right. So it took that long, but we kept on plugging, and I really admire Louise for saying, "Go ahead, go ahead." She's telling me at one point Kash was so disgusted. He said, "To heck with everything, don't do anything more," but I told Louise, "Let's keep on going regardless," so she consented and we did our best.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.