<Begin Segment 18>

TK: Did you feel any pressure from any person or groups during this process when you were writing to have a report come up with certain kind of conclusions?

AM: Sure, I mean, there, there were very frankly and directly expressed views from a number of different groups of what they thought the final conclusion should be. The major Japanese American associations, excuse me, organizations had views and expressed them. Not that I recall from people in Congress, but I don't know how much difference that would have made either, just because we had to report to all the Congress and there would have been, you know it would have been different voices coming in, and obviously we had a present member of Congress on the commission and a number of people who had been members of Congress -- Father Drinan, Senator Mitchell, and so on, Senator Brooke. I think they would have listened politely and simply done what they wanted to do. There were a lot of clearly expressed views but the makeup of the commission was such that the commissioners really were thinking this through for themselves. At the same time, there's no question that some of the views make a difference to how you to get to the ultimate result, and I ran through some of this at one point today.

But, for instance, the basic number from the Japanese American community was $25,000. Now, that just sets up a certain dynamic that the commissioners have to deal with. You really can't produce a higher number like $30,000 because -- especially given the fact that when you multiply this out it's always going to be a big number -- because then you go back to Congress with that and there's going to be a number of Congressmen who are maybe interested in doing something here, but also interested in protecting the treasury, and they're mainly going to say, "Well look, this is absurd, even the Japanese Americans say it's only worth $25,000. How can you possibly think it's worth $30,000?" At the same time, I don't think you can come in right at $25,000, because then you get the argument: "All you are is a shill for the groups that have been pushing $25,000 and it's clear you haven't really thought about this for yourself." And there's a tendency then to... well, you have to come in somewhere under whatever that number is, and you then start to weigh -- obviously if you pick a round number and a number that shows the seriousness of what's going on -- but you're also balancing at the other end what's the total number when you've multiplied it by whatever the number of survivors is, because the bigger the final number, the harder it is to pass, just as a practical matter. Someone today reminded me of what Senator Inouye said at one point here, which is, "$20,000 isn't nearly enough, and a billion and a half is far too much." And that got it. [Laughs]

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.