Densho Digital Repository
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Floyd Shimomura Interview
Narrator: Floyd Shimomura
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 11, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-466-17

<Begin Segment 17>

TI: And then in 1980, you were reelected as, again, vice president of public affairs?

FS: Right.

TI: So 1980 was also...

FS: The commission year.

TI: Yeah, that was the decision to go down the commission, not just the commission years, but kind of a decision the JACL had to decide, did we push for legislation now in terms of pushing for a redress bill, or go down the path of the commission hearings. So tell me your recollection of how that all happened.

FS: Well, I was on the national board, so ultimately the board had to make a decision on that. But we had a redress committee, and John Tateishi and a lot of people were involved in it. And because I was the vice president of public affairs, I kind of was, I went to those meetings to kind of monitor it and everything. Because in the end, I would be one of the people who would have to get the board to make a decision, so I wanted to feel like I really understood what everybody was saying. And there was a technical argument and then kind of an emotional argument. The technical argument is that you read the resolution, they said to go out and... they voted for a redress bill and they meant money. They didn't vote for a commission. That's what they said, read the resolution, you're supposed go out and get a bill that's going to get us an apology and money. There's nothing in there that talks about commission. But the counterargument, technical argument is, oh, no, this is just a step that we're taking in order to accomplish this. This doesn't tell us everything about how we're going to do it, it just says what the goal is. And as long as we take action that's consistent with reaching that goal, I think we're within the meaning of that resolution. And so I think from a technical argument, I think you could argue that both ways. But I think the real reason is that -- because this is the emotional thing -- is that there's a big trust element here. And JACL, because its strategy during World War II was to acquiesce in the government, to go along, not to resist the incarceration, and actually to encourage our boys in this and fight. So rather than fighting or resisting it, we were accommodating the government. And so, based on that track record, is that there was no history of JACL turning around and going after the government aggressively, that was not our history in general, at least, on our own. I mean, we joined the Civil Rights Movement and stuff like that, but the other people were spearheading it and we helped, but this is a Japanese American issue. So I think that there was... people, when they saw the commission, they're thinking it's like that fighter, he's just looking for a place to take a dive.

TI: Explain that to me.

FS: You know, there are some fighters that aren't really serious about winning the match, and so they're just looking for a way to...

TI: So end the match.

FS: To end the match. But then having somebody pretend like they hit them, and then they take a dive.

TI: Right, I get that, but I don't understand the connection to the redress hearings.

FS: Well, okay, it's the feeling that, not only JACL, but maybe even the Nikkei congressional people don't really want to take this issue on. So a commission is a way of burying the issue or maybe diverting it. It's kind of like bait and switch, you wanted this but then they try and sell you that.

TI: I mean, this is what several of the Seattle activists were, they totally felt betrayed on this.

FS: Oh, and I understand, it was because the trust factor was low. And so I understand that better now than I did at that time.

TI: And for the reasons you just mentioned, they thought the Congressional delegation didn't want to really go to the mat on this, and this was their way of deflecting it.

FS: Deflecting it or delaying it, and maybe everybody would lose interest at some time, or something like that.

TI: Including national JACL, they would say.

FS: Yeah, no, that's true. And I think that the JACL National Committee was very sensitive to that, and actually kind of shared the same view that they had to show that they were really tough. So they were, John Tateishi and most of the committee were really reluctant to go the commission route because... okay, this is another way of thinking about it. We were talking about how difficult everybody understood it was to get this issued. So a lot of it, the thing that people really think about in the back of their mind is, okay, if we go down, how do we want to go down? I mean, there's different ways of losing, right? And the people said, "Let's just take this straight up, take it to Congress, get a vote, either we win or we lose, but we gave it our best shot." That's a clean way of doing it.

TI: It goes back to the earlier argument, virtue within the...

FS: Yeah. But the problem with the commission approach is, one, even if you decide to go to it, one, you have to get Congress to pass the commission bill. Second, the commission itself has to review it and actually give you a favorable report, and the third thing is, even if they give you a good factual report...

TI: You still have to go to Congress.

FS: They have to give you a good recommendation. I mean, they could say, "We'll give everybody a thousand dollars or five hundred dollars." And so there was three different bad ways that it could end, and there was little question that, if we couldn't even get a commission bill, how do we expect to just turn around and say, "Okay, then we'll just go in and get another bill"? If we didn't have the clout to even get a commission, that would be the way it would end. Or if we did get a commission and then they didn't make the findings or give us a recommendation, it would end there, too. And I think everybody found that to be a very poor way of ending this. Everybody would agree, it's better just to go to Congress and get shot down than to lose on this thing. But the problem is, the congressional folks, they basically said this: "Are you guys really serious about getting redress, or are you just pounding your chest and wanting to posture on this? Because if that's what it is... and we're politicians and we understand that, then okay, we'll just put something in and try and get you a hearing and we'll just take our chances. But frankly, we think there's no way you're going to get it. Because most of these folks here don't even know that incarceration happened. But if you're serious about this, maybe this commission thing at least has a chance. Even that's a long shot, but there's a chance of winning. And we think we can get it done because we control Congress and the White House right now." And they were able to get it, because Carter was President then. But the risk there was, if it didn't work out, I felt like JACL was betting the company on that, right? If that's the way redress ended, that was the end of the organization. I mean, given everything that happened before.

TI: Because people wouldn't trust the...

FS: Yeah, the trust factor. And then the critics would just eat us alive. That's why there was great reluctance to go this way. But in the end, I think we decided that we had to also trust the Nikkei congressional people, that they were giving us the best advice, and they were actually trying to give us a way to win, not just a way to posture itself. And so we went with the commission approach, and I think the critics of that just sat back and said, "Okay, you get this thing done." And they did get, they get it. So they start thinking, all right, now you've got to get this commission appointed and then you've got to get recommendations and everything.

TI: And those things happened...

FS: Maybe you get it, maybe you won't. See, this is when a kind of a magical dynamic happened, is that after the commission got constituted, and then we got very good, favorable people on the commission, and then the commission started talking about the hearings that they were going to have, we in JACL that was... I mean, we were betting the company, we had to make this work, right? But I think that even the critics started saying, "Well, wait a minute here, we're not going to boycott these hearings. And besides that, we don't really trust the JACL to put the best case on it," so everybody jumped in and tried to make those hearings successful. Everybody did. And, to me, that was gratifying because then if we fail, I mean, if we tried to do it on our own and we fail, then it's like the Titanic going down. But if our critics joined us and they did everything, and we followed their advice, took all their suggestions about how we should argue and everything, and we all worked shoulder to shoulder and it went down, well, it's like we're all in the bathtub together, right? So it made it safer for us. And the thing is, the commission hearings, I thought were just a tremendous success. I mean, talk about unintended consequences, and normally those are negative things that happen. But I think the unintended consequences turned out to be all positive here. The community came out, and the hearings were... I mean, to me it was like going to a very sad funeral. It was very somber and people were crying, and that whole catharsis happened. And we got great media coverage, and nobody talked about, is this issue too old, too late. Because if you go to the hearings, hey, the victims are right here and they're still suffering. And then we got the great findings, and these findings, they discovered all the deception of the government and the reports.

<End Segment 17> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.