<Begin Segment 17>

TI: So at a JACL national board meeting, how did you articulate this? Did you just tell people, "Don't worry," or, "Believe me," how do you convince people that worked on this?

FS: See, this is a very key question. Number one, I was a Reagan appointee working as Inspector General. I was also serving as national president of JACL, and I cleared that with the White House before I agreed to run for national president. But I was forewarned to be careful, because people are going to be taking potshots at you, and I was well aware of that. So even with the JACL board, they didn't know that we had met with Jack Svahn on the redress thing, but Ron Wakabayashi knew, he put the black book together. John Tateishi knew, he was there at the meeting with us. Ron Ikejiri was there, he was at the meeting with me. (Floyd Shimomura was there also). And the book that was put together by Ron Wakabayashi had, for example, the news clippings that you've seen about when President Reagan was at the funeral of Masuda?

TI: Right.

FS: Right, all of those things were in a nice black book that we discussed and presented to Jack Svahn and Lou Hayes. [Interruption] I can tell you that I don't know what Lou of Jack Svahn discussed with the President, or if they even presented it at all. But I'll tell you, it's interesting, when I had a phone discussion with Floyd Shimomura a couple months ago, he had forgotten about that meeting, but he looked up the Reagan Library info, and he found info regarding our meeting in August of that year. And my guess is, if one were to pursue this, you would find that black book that we took into the White House that day, there.

TI: Maybe at the Reagan Archives?

FS: Yeah, it's probably there.

TI: Interesting.

FS: Would be my guess.

TI: And you say August, so that was August 1988, right before he signed it?

FS: No. When we were... I think it was '84.

TI: Much, much earlier then, okay.

FS: (Much) earlier.

TI: Okay, I'll check. You actually sent me that email, so I'll take a look at it.

FS: I think it was 1984.

TI: So much, much earlier.

FS: August 10, 1984.

TI: Was when you had that meeting with Floyd?

FS: Yeah, Floyd was national president. I didn't become national president...

TI: Until '84.

FS: Yeah, '84-'86.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2017 Densho. All Rights Reserved.