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TK: Do you remember when you first met the commission members? And if so, what was your opinion, and perhaps what was your reaction at that time?

AM: Well, they were a very impressive set of people. They were almost all of them were very distinguished, and all with very distinguished careers of public service of one sort or another. And I think pretty much without exception, a great deal of interest and concern with what this commission was looking into. This is, it is a very powerful story when you come to understand what it (involves). Obviously, if you don't know the history, it takes a little while to reach, reach that. But once you do, once you've heard the testimony, I think it rivets you. And by the time I arrived, I think that was really true of all the commissioners. And it was a diverse group politically, in terms of background and so on, but there was remarkably little internal dissension and debate. I sensed afterwards that people who, you know, weren't there in the room (...) would assume there was a great deal more debate than in fact there was. And obviously on some things like the voluntary aspect of the recommendations and, you know, what the amount should be and so on, there was serious discussion. But this was not a group who by the time I arrived had fundamental differences on what this story was about and what was important to say to the Congress and to the country about it. The historical part of the report was unanimously approved by the commissioners and we had, for instance, toward the end, a day that we'd set aside for the commissioners to sit down with us and go over the text stem to stern. And I think I'm right in remembering that only three commissioners thought it was necessary to do that, and that there were really quite modest changes that they wanted to make. And I think that that reflected the fact that, from quite an early stage, they'd basically seen these events in the same way. It was not something where there were clear lines of division or difference. And then, you know, given the range of their background -- and the strength of their characters -- I mean, one thing that you certainly came to understand was that they were not wallflowers. [Laughs] And if they disagreed about something or had a different point of view, they were perfectly willing to express it. And I think -- so I think this really strong consensus on the central parts of the report reflected real common experience going through this work.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.