<Begin Segment 18>

RD: The other thing that we need to get in here is how I screwed John J. McCloy. What year was Personal Justice Denied published?

TI: 1983.

RD: Was it?

TI: Yes, I'm pretty sure it was '83, because it came out right after the hearings. Well...

RD: It came out before the Salt Lake City conference.

TI: Right. So more like...

RD: Actually, it has the wrong date published. It's got a date published because they were afraid they were not going to have enough money in the next fiscal year to publish it. So it's got an earlier date than it actually appeared. They've got a December date on it, but it really didn't appear until January.

TI: Okay, so I think what I've seen is maybe December '83, so it was more like '84 that it was published?

RD: Yes. But the announcement of the redress funds came at the end of June. Because everything would have come to an end by the fiscal year, which was the thirtieth, and it was just before then. It happened to be that I was out in San Francisco working with Loni Ding for about three days, and I stayed in a motel diagonally up the street from where the JACL office is. I had stayed there before and it's a nice place in Nihonmachi, it's comfortable, etcetera. And I come, working with her, she's like a Prussian field marshal, I'm exhausted. I come in, I take a shower, and I'm lying on the bed half asleep and the MacNeil/Lehrer Report comes on, and I find out that redress has been announced, the funding, that it's twenty thousand dollars, which made me feel good. And then they interviewed John J. McCloy, and he comes up with this terrible stuff. It just made me sick. And I eventually dozed off. And the phone rang, and it's Judith calling me. "Roger," she says, "I just fielded a phone call from the executive director of the JACL. They want to talk to you as fast as they can. I did not tell them you were in San Francisco."

TI: And right across the street almost.

RD: Yes. So I picked up the phone, and they told me that on some imminent date, one or two or three days, a camera crew from the CBS Sunday Morning program was going to come and film them for a program about redress, and would I come and be their spokesman? So I said okay. They said, "We'll pay your airfare." I said, "You don't have to pay my airfare. I'm in a motel across the street. You'll have to pay the extra cost of changing the ticket and my hotel bill, and I don't charge anything." So they thought that was very lucky. So I'm over there, and the film crew comes in, and I talk to them. "Who's your producer?" and they told me who the producer was, and it's the guy who made the film, when he was with NBC, called Guilty by Reason of Race, which is the best film, one of the first films, television films ever made, and that he was their director, and he's very much pro-redress. And I said, "Listen, I'm going to be doing the talking with these people. Are you going to talk to McCloy?" He said, "Oh, yeah, we talk to him next week." Monday I think it was. This was close to the weekend. I said, "Listen, I want you to ask me this question at some point in that. And then when you get to McCloy, ask him the same question and see if the answer he gives doesn't fit very nicely into what I will say in my answer." So I did it, and they did it, and it made him look like a fool. Because I have a very good memory, short range, anyway. And what he had said burned into me, and he was going on and on, and I said, "This guy has learned this. He's been saying this everywhere, he's going to say the same damn thing." So he asked me a question, it was about, "Is redress justifiable?" I said, "Well, you know, some people would say that it's not justifiable because..." and I gave what he said, "but that's obscene. No decent person would possibly say that." And they asked him, and it worked.

TI: Because he said exactly what you thought he would?

RD: Yes, every single word. Just the same thing. And McCloy knew he'd been done to. And that was done about eight days or nine days after I spoke. This was a Sunday morning program, as soon as it was off the air, he was on the phone with the president of CBS demanding an investigation of how this was done. And they came with the shooting logs and showed him that they had talked to me on this day, and I had said this, and they had talked to me that day, I'd said this. It just followed that was the thing to do, and it was. And he knew he'd been had, but he didn't know how, and they beat the rap, but he raised hell. And they were really called on the carpet.

TI: That's a good story.

RD: It's your exclusive, not told before.

TI: [Laughs] Good.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2013 Densho. All Rights Reserved.