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TI: One other question I realized in terms of the JACL. We talked about your election to national secretary treasurer, you ran unopposed. How about when the biennium was up, and then you ran for national president. Now, was that unopposed, or did you have to run against someone? Talk about that election.

FS: That was an interesting thing. Min Yasui and I ran for national president, and I won by one vote. One vote.

TI: So you're talking about Min Yasui, who is an icon in terms of, his case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, civil rights lawyer in the Denver area, well-known in the community. And so you ran against Min Yasui.

FS: Yes.

TI: And was Min active in the JACL at this point?

FS: Well, he, at that time, was active in a sense that he was working with John Tateishi, who was chairman of the redress committee, and he was doing a lot of great work drumming up support and activity for the JACL. I had the utmost respect for Min and he and I got along fine. Some people didn't like the idea that I ran for national president against Min. But I have to tell you honestly, really not my idea to begin with, I was asked by some of the key people in JACL who felt that maybe with my position in government and my understanding about how government works, that maybe I might be able to give it a little push on the redress program. So it's on that basis that I agreed to run. And Min and I got along fine, but as soon I won the national presidency by one vote --

TI: Which knowing the history of the JACL, one, they're usually not that close, these elections. And probably when you say one vote, this may have been probably the closest election in the history of the JACL.

FS: Probably, I don't know. I think so. But Min and I got along fine, he agreed to run the LEC for, that's the first thing I asked him to do.

TI: So that's the Legislative Education Committee?

FS: Yep. And we had to do that as a lobbying arm for the JACL. So that all worked out fine.

TI: And you mentioned that Min was aligned with John Tateishi, what was John doing at this point? Was he involved with the JACL? I can't remember what his role was during this time period.

FS: Well, I don't remember the exact dates, Tom, but John was redress director for JACL, and then there's a period of time there where there was some turmoil, and John was out of the program for a while and then he came back. I thought John did a good job, some people didn't. But I've always found that in a volunteer organization like that, there's always some people that'll agree, some that won't agree, and that was the kind of situation that we were in.

TI: Well, so going back to your election, so you just won a very, very close election against Min Yasui. You mentioned how the two of you were fine, how about the rest of the organization. Did that election cause tension? It was such a close election, what did it do to the organization?

FS: You know, the first thing I did was I got together with Min, and I said, "Min, I won by one vote. That doesn't seem like a very strong mandate, but I want you to know one thing. I want you to be a hundred percent in this with me, and I want you to run the LEC, and you will have my hundred percent support." And we worked together, and it worked fine. Min and I became good friends even before then, and we continued. And I can't say enough about him. He was a great guy.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.