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BN: Continuing with the redress, what were your, what do you remember about the commission hearings in the summer of '81? You yourself testified?

AN: Yeah, I testified on behalf of LTPRO.

BN: Right, and I know you guys did a lot of organizing or arranging for people to testify.

AN: So during those days, when the commission legislation came out, we were opposed to it. And it was, again, that's where, I think, JACL and their perspectives were correct, and the elected officials were just correct. And we were looking at it from a very small perspective, saying, "Why do we need another commission to just restudy what we already know?" etcetera, etcetera. So we opposed it. But once it passed, we said, okay, how are we going to use this? And so we decided to push for regional commission hearings, bilingual, all those things, because our concern was that this notion of a commission was they were going to meet in D.C., they were going to take public testimony for a day or whatever, then they were going to close the doors and issue a report. And then the report would gather dust on a shelf, etcetera. And so fortunately, the people that were involved in the commission saw the value of doing regional hearings. So we were just fortunate with all of the people that were on the commission. And to a person, I think it was great. Even having Dan Lungren was great. So that's kind of how it happened.

But we realized, pushing for this, when we had it in L.A., we felt, okay, we pushed for this, and we didn't want the scholars. Then we realized, who were we going to get to testify? [Laughs] And at that time, it was hard to find people that were willing to testify. Or the people that were willing to testify would be the same people that you would be inviting to go to D.C. to testify. So that became the real challenge. The L.A. hearing was the first one, regional. It's got to be something that is real, because we were pushing, it's got to be in the communities where people can tell the story. So you push that, and if they go, "Fine, we'll do it," then the burden is making that, having it happen. Because it would have been the worst thing to have a commission hearing in L.A. and the only people that were testifying were scholars and civil rights activists, etcetera. So when we looked around, there weren't many people that... but there were so many people that had stories, but they just didn't want to tell it. So then we tried to convince people to tell your story, and then we started having workshops where we'd be practicing the testimony and things like that. And so that's where it went. So the few people that were just willing to tell their story, it kind of took off and created a kind of energy of itself. When people heard those, then they wanted to step up and tell their story, etcetera. And what was so nice is it's so unscripted that you could see that what came out were regular people. And that was the power of the D.C. delegation. You can tell that these are not lobbyists that were out there, or members of a union that are out there with their talking points.

And so, to me, it was powerful. It was powerful for so many reasons, but where it hit the most for me and for many of our community is the emotion of people that had not told their stories for years being willing to share that. And then the groundswell of others saying, "Oh, finally." And then it helped that the Rafu Shimpo did their survey during that time, when Dwight was the editor, and telling people, "It's okay to support redress." Because the storyline from the, quote, "community leaders" was, oh, no, we shouldn't demand money. It's below us, it's unrealistic, it's shameful. And then when it came out, and through that kind of thing saying, oh, no... so redress became -- and in my family, I know that's what happened. When I started initially involved in redress, my mom... well, one of my aunts disowned me. They just were embarrassed that one of the relatives was involved in this thing. So anyways, that's kind of -- and so the commission hearings were critical, and in retrospect, we were glad that we decided to support it rather than oppose that kind of thing. Anyway, that was kind of the key turning point in the redress movement, is it then became a community issue. And I think really, the momentum built from then on.

BN: Did you ask any of your... your mom or any of your relatives to testify?

AN: My sister did. My mom, no.

BN: Your sister did testify?

AN: Yeah, she did. But yeah, it was a crazy time. We just didn't know what to expect. But it was great, in retrospect, the VC videotaped that, and who would have thought at the time? But yeah, you just never know when you're at key moments in history until after the fact. Oh, that was an important time.

BN: Yeah, and we're still trying to find video for some of the other hearings. It doesn't exist, or someone filmed it and no one knows what happened to it.

AN: I know, and that's the value of some of these. But it's how you delegate how you tell the story and carry it on. So the commission hearings, to me, were a key kind of event in terms of moving redress forward.

BN: Were you there with the Lillian Baker episode?

AN: Yeah.

BN: Did you know her? She's from this area.

AN: Oh, yeah, we knew Lillian Baker. Because she'd come to other things, there was a smaller group of people that kind of did that. But we were surprised that Lillian would go up and do the things she did, but we knew their position, and a few of them would come to other events and be fairly outspoken. In many ways, it's somewhat helpful to... we were fortunate in that there are reasonable people that could oppose redress. Like Dan Lungren is someone who was somewhat reasonable, and then there's the racists that can't differentiate between Japanese and Japanese Americans. And we were fortunate that the racists were identified as the opposition. And so it kept a lot of more reasoned opponents to redress from being visible during that time.

BN: Interesting perspective, but it's true.

AN: Yeah, I think that it was helpful that the anti-redress were kind of caricatured in terms of their opposition. Because there are some very reasonable arguments that could be made to oppose redress, but they were never able to take traction and there was never any self interest of any groups to really take that position on.

BN: Were there any kinds of threats or did you get any people threatening to blow things up or any of that kind of stuff or were the Lillian Bakers of the world more...

AN: Yeah, they were pretty isolated.

BN: You never saw them as dangerous?

AN: No, no. There was never... and we got some racist mail and things like that, but didn't think that was, nothing we would consider a threat.

BN: Did you get to know Lungren?

AN: I knew him because he was congressman in Long Beach.

BN: He was in your area.

AN: Yeah, yeah. And we had meetings. And at the time, he's conservative, and was obviously working off of... but this was not during the Trump era, and so it was a different kind of time.

BN: I mean, he supported the apology.

AN: Yeah, yeah.

BN: Not the monetary side.

AN: He realized that there was no self interest for his political career to kind of be an outspoken opponent. So he raised his opposition, but not in a way that I think he could have if he thought it was a political platform, and he could have played much more of a role on the commission. But there no interest to him, because he was thinking of running, as he did, for higher office, and didn't see... if this was during the Trump era, there would be a wholly different set of dynamics, and he and others would have been jumping on this as part of the line. But fortunately, the Republicans, there was much more of a sense of bipartisan cooperation and appealing to the middle.

BN: You had a fair amount of Republican support.

AN: Yeah, and so because of that, there was not, the Republican party was not defined by the fringes, and so we were able to kind of get through. But the level of bipartisanship was critical. If you think of the Senate in '87 versus the Senate of today, I mean, there's no way you can get many bills that's gonna have bipartisan support. So for all of those reasons, we were just fortunate to have done things at the time that was done with getting bipartisan support for redress.

BN: At what point did you think this was really possible?

AN: It was actually when this bills were introduced with a number of, particularly on the Senate side, the cosponsors, you go, whoa. But the number of House and Senate cosponsors began to say that this can happen. And so we became very optimistic and we were having, when we did the lobbying delegations before a lot of that, that became optimistic. I didn't think that Reagan would sign it. But the level of Senate support was critical. And so that's why I think Spark Matsunaga's efforts using... my analysis, although I'm not, by far, an expert on this, was that Dan Inouye had to play a background role because he was hoping to become Senate pro tem, that he didn't want to be too identified with a self-interest kind of thing, and that he appeared to defer to Spark Matsunaga, who did not have the most impressive legislative record, but was just liked, and had principles. He was a man of principle, well-liked within the "club," the Senate, and so my sense is that he stood up and said, "This is an issue that I believe in," and he called in his relationships with people. And I think, fortunately for Daniel Inouye, was kind of saying, this is Spark's issue. And also it allows him to not, he wanted to position himself to be the head of the Senate, so he didn't want to be too overly identified. So that all kind of worked out, and I think it was nothing but, the Senate was enough of a club, and a lot of people, I think, really liked Spark, and oh yeah, this is an issue that... there's not a lot of downside politically to support it. And so I think that really gave a lot of the impetus to kind of move that forward.

So that's when I began -- but I didn't feel that Reagan was going to sign the thing. I thought it was a victory to just get Congress to pass it. And I saw this was an ongoing effort beyond that. But then when Reagan signed it, it was surprising, but then in retrospect, it was not surprising, because I was naive about the difference between authorization and appropriation, that you can have a President authorize and then never fund. There's all sorts of legislation, I guess, that are authorized that are never funded. I think this was the plan. Reagan's plan would be, well, there's no reason not to sign it because there's more negative, the downside, but he's never going to recommend any significant appropriations to ever have this thing happen. And that's where Dan Inouye steps in. So it's all timing, so Dan Inouye steps in at a time when he did not get the President pro tem position, that was George Mitchell, and so Dan's in a position where he has nowhere to go. He's as high up within the Senate as he's going to go, because he was the natural person and was not accepted. And so I think he was able to bring his expertise and other things to bear to kind of ultimately get the appropriations that were necessary. So, to me, it's an amazing story, but then I'm biased. But to see how things fell into place at all the different points, we just had the right people in place to be able to do things.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2018 Densho. All Rights Reserved.