<Begin Segment 14>

TI: Let's pick it back up. We were talking about a meeting of the four congressmen, the two senators and two congressmen, and they were talking about the next step. And one of the issues is Senator S.I. Hayakawa, who has come out publicly against redress. I think at one point -- and I think this was even before you started your job in D.C. -- he said this is this crazy idea by these Sanseis and it's not a good idea, so he's already come out and said this. And so the four others, you were just getting to it, were going to approach him to see if he could support redress.

RI: It's an interesting dynamic. Well, you have Senator Inouye, Senator Matsunaga are sitting on one side, you have Congressman Mineta and Congressman Matsui. Inouye and Matsunaga are from Hawaii, Mineta and Matsui are from California. Senator Inouye said, "We need to have Senator Hayakawa on our side," and because Senator Hayakawa represented California, by definition, we need the inclusion of Congressmen Mineta and Matsui to approach the senator. So what happened was that they asked me to set up a meeting. I set up a meeting with Senator Hayakawa, and I indicated to him that, "Senator Matsunaga, Senator Inouye, Congressmen Mineta and Matsui would like to come by and discuss the redress, prospective redress legislation and your sponsorship." So the date and time was set, it's probably like one o'clock in the afternoon, and this is, in Washington, everything is protocol, it's based on seniority. And the most senior person obviously would be Senator Inouye and Senator Matsunaga, Congressmen Mineta and Matsui. But they said, "We will visit Senator Hayakawa in his office," which, in a lot of ways is somewhat unprecedented. Well, prior to the meeting, I knew Congressman Mineta and Congressman Matsui would not be at the meeting, but I decided that I understand.

TI: Because they refused to go to his office?

RI: Well, no, I don't think they refused to go to the office, because Senator Hayakawa was a very polarizing personality statements, probably much like President Trump today. And there was probably no net benefit in the sense of making a positive inroad, but nonetheless, we decided we'll go forward with the meeting. And we held the meeting and the meeting started.

TI: And this is the three senators and you?

RI: Yes, three senators and myself and one of Senator's Inouye's staffperson and the chief of staff, whose name I know, but I won't pronounce, at Senator Hayakawa's office. So we're in Senator Hayakawa's private office in his room, Senate office, and discussion goes on. Senator Inouye looks at his watch, "Well, I'm sure they'll be coming soon," so we just talked generally about different things. And if you're from California, you receive a lot of fruits and vegetables and nuts and things like that from the agricultural community and they send it to Washington, D.C., and then they passed it out to staff. So Senator Hayakawa had a whole three or four bags of prunes. And he looks at Senator Inouye and says, "Hey, Danny, you want some prunes?" So Senator Inouye looked at it and says, "Sam, I don't need prunes right now. I'm not that old." [Laughs] Everyone started laughing. So, you know, we kind of talked a little bit, another ten minutes goes by, and Senator Inouye's staffperson gets up, she walks out, comes back five minutes later, and she says, "There's a vote on the House floor right now, and I do not believe that Congressmen Mineta and Matsui are going to be able to come in time for this meeting. Perhaps we should proceed."

TI: So this was just a little white lie just to...

RI: I don't know if it was a white lie, it's just the way things evolved. And as a result, Senator Inouye starts talking, "And we'd like to have your support, Sam, on redress." Then Senator Hayakawa's chief of staff, I believe his name was Pratt, he came from the Hoover Institute, starts talking. I don't know about you, but I would never interrupt Senator Inouye under any condition. Senator Inouye looked at him, looked toward Senator Hayakawa and continued talking. And Senator Matsunaga smiled at him and says, "Sam, we need your help on this one. It's good for the community, and it's good for your people in California. Right away, Senator Hayakawa says, "Okay, I'll support it." And to be able to defuse the situation where redress would have gotten nowhere if Hayakawa would have opposed it on the floor of the Senate. It would be mission impossible.

TI: And just because you were there, the sense I got when you told this story, so it was Matsunaga stepping in at that moment was really key.

RI: Well, I don't know, I think because when legislators work together and they understand how human interaction is effective. And I think Senator Hayakawa, other than the things that he wanted to say and believe in, like most people that are elected, they want to do what's right. And I believe at that time, Senator Hayakawa looked at the whole viewpoint, not about being elected or reelected, but doing what's right. And he made that decision through the assistance and help, thoughts of Senator Inouye and Senator Matsunaga. You know, one of the greatest quotes of Senator Hayakawa was when this whole issue about returning the Panama Canal, it was in the Carter administration, backed the Panamanians. And the Senate has to vote on it because it's a treaty. Senator Hayakawa states out and says, "You know, I don't know why we have to return the Panama Canal back to the Panamanian people, we stole it fair and square." [Laughs] I love that quote because it is so, historically it's true, but it's said in such a way that it captures that whole idea of American foreign policy. And so at that time, I said, okay, we need Senator Hayakawa, through staff or others, to get him in a position that, at the right time... because so many of these statements, like many times you make a statement, it's just off the cuff. If we can have his staffpeople and the senators think in this direction in support of redress, you'll have an easier road to go, especially in the Senate. And so we were very, very fortunate. One of the things, too, people miss, is that Senator Inouye at that time was Secretary of the Senate, a very high position. And Sparky Matsunaga was one of the majority whips, in other words, the majority leader telling people that we needed to support the legislation. So where else in American history would you have those top three to five positions in the U.S. Senate held by...

TI: By Nikkei.

RI: ...Japanese Americans? And so it's a real honor. That's why... digressing for a moment, when you think about it, probably one of the highest moments for Senator Inouye was when General Eric Shinseki became the Chief of Staff, right? And this is the same army that Senator Inouye served in. And to see someone like General Shinseki to rise to that position during this timeframe was really something. Digressing backwards a little bit to that meeting with Senator Hayakawa, bottom line point that I think as everyone was leaving is that Senator Hayakawa, I don't think was looking for a legacy, but I think he was looking at, what is the right thing to do. I'm very happy to see that he was making that transition, forget the political aspects of the issue, but what's the right thing to do? And as we were walking out the door, down the corridors of the Senate with Senator Inouye and Senator Matsunaga and staffpeople, Senator Inouye said, "One of the strengths of our country is maybe, just maybe, fifty years after the fact, this country's strong enough to right a wrong." And that's huge. I mean, I don't think there's any country in the world today that can go back, has the courage, the confidence in its future, that can say, "We did something wrong, we're going to right it the best way we can, and we're going to move forward." To this day -- and I'm not going to get involved with foreign policy -- but Japan has a very, very difficult time of convincing other people of the things that they're, apologized for during World War II, and that's why you continue to have this friction. If you think about it, too, the greatness of the United States, if you want your country to grow in a war, be beaten by the United States. Germany loses World War II, what happens? The United States rebuilds Germany, a major competitor of the United States. The U.S. beats Japan, makes Japan our strongest ally, probably in the world, and rebuilds the country. Now, what other countries are going to do that? And this is a very true story. Part of the role of the Japanese American Citizens League was to interface often with the embassy of Japan on cultural issues and other kinds of issues. And what happened, they would ask questions about import bashing and the rest. And so one of the good questions that came up is that can Japan do a better job at improving relations with their neighbors, other countries, says, very, very difficult. Japanese, to get to that point, you have to have a consensus, and says, "We don't have that strong consensus yet." And this is forty years ago, hopefully they're making progress.

TI: Yeah. So, Ron, I want to go back to that meeting, because this is a pretty important meeting. Going into the meeting, what did you think the outcome was going to be? Did you guys have a sense that he would...

RI: No. The sense that I had is that Senator Inouye and Senator Matsunaga wanted to turn over every stone. They don't want to assume... I'm sure, if they had to, they would have spoken on the floor of the Senate, and they would probably have enough votes to push it through. But at that time, it was a more collegial atmosphere and they didn't want to do that. So maybe it was "go for broke."

TI: So was this a... so as you're walking down that hallway after the meeting, were they surprised? Did they talk about, oh my gosh... and it's not clear whether or not, because I never think of him coming, in terms of supporting redress, but more kind of standing down in his opposition. He didn't bash it. But one, going back to, as you're walking down the hallway, what was the sense, and how was this communicated to Matsui and Mineta? Because I'm sure they were shocked or surprised.

RI: Well, one, there was no elation. And walking down the hallway, probably, there was more thankfulness, for lack of better words, "Honto ni arigatai," very, very thankful of the result. I don't think they expected Senator Hayakawa to be as supportive or have more of a stringent no. And to their credit, I really believe it has a long, long way to go, is that they were willing to visit him at his office. It's something else if they said, "Sam, come on to our office, we want to talk to you," like, "You come here." These two were giants of the Senate, they already had the respect of their colleagues on both sides of the aisle, and they were willing to go to the junior senator from California and sit down and ask him, "for your support." And so much of that is interpersonal relationships. I know that, I remember one time sitting in the gallery in the Senate, and I was watching Senator Inouye, and he defeated a Republican bill against his very, very good friend Senator Ted Stevens from Alaska. Right after the vote, the vote was done, Senator Stevens lost. He goes up to Senator Stevens, and I could tell, says, "I'm sorry, Ted, we couldn't support you on this one, we'll try to support you on the next one." Well, Senator Ted Stevens and Senator Inouye were brothers. I mean, what Republican senator would go to Hawaii and campaign for a Democratic senator? And what Democratic senator would go to Alaska and campaign for a Republican for Senate? Those two probably had so much power, they represented the least amount of people in the whole United States, but probably represented over five or sixty percent of the entire power in terms of budget and appropriations ability. And that's relationship.

TI: Yeah. No, and that story you told, I think, demonstrated that in terms of how they operated. And what we're doing here is we're actually doing some of the behind the scenes stuff that most people don't know about. Because I wasn't aware of this meeting, and I know even after this meeting later, the community kept bashing Hayakawa, right? They viewed him as the enemy, as an obstacle to this. Was there any efforts by you or the JACL to try to neutralize some of the negative outcries against Hayakawa, given his willingness to kind of go along with redress?

RI: Well, I believe that we did share as much information as we could with staff, and saying, "These are policy position papers. We feel certain ways, we're not going to tell against you." One of the things you have to learn, and Senator Inouye always reminded me of this, never burn a bridge. You burn a bridge, one day you're going to have to go over that bridge and you're not going to make it because you burned it. So it was very, very important to maintain that relationship. And so ever since that time, certainly with their staff, even if they wanted to be caustic against this -- because so much in politics is really jealousy. If you get off the jealousy and go into the real basis of why you want to have a certain policy and you agree with it, then you can go with it. But so much of the, particularly his staff, because Senator Hayakawa was not... to me, a U.S. Senator is a tremendous achievement. To be an effective Senator is difficult because it's all staffing. And a lot of the staff was young, and a lot of his staff had their own thoughts and ways that were different from the Senator's, but they figured they could control them or use them. And so that's typical of a lot of the congressmen's offices. But at that time, right place, right time. I don't think... I don't think, but for Senator Inouye and Matsunaga, and also including Congressmen Mineta and Matsui... of course, who weren't able to be there at that time. Because of maybe cultural, they said, "We're going to go and pay our respects to Senator Hayakawa and see if we can get his support." And to his credit, he gave it. The difficulty, there are certain things that you just.. it's not like it's not transparent, but certain things you just... because really this is probably the only time recorded that I ever had a discussion regarding this. And it's a key point. It was like a lot of things in life, the last man standing is going to be able to write history the way they write it, that's what it comes down to.

TI: Well, and there's very few people who were in your position.

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.