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TI: If I don't ask this question -- we're coming down to the end -- Frank Sato will be mad at me. So towards the end of your term as national president, in the last, I think it was probably in the last week or so, and the new incoming president is Frank Sato.

FS: Right, but he hadn't been elected yet.

TI: Yeah, had not been elected yet, that's true, had not been elected. So the convention was coming up later on that month. But there was a meeting at the White House that you and Frank attended with John Tateishi.

FS: Right.

TI: Tell me about that meeting.

FS: Yeah, it was totally unexpected from my perspective. But I got a phone call that said, it seemed like it was on a Monday, and they said, "Hey, we got a meeting at the White House on Friday, so pack your suitcase and drop everything and get on a plane and get out there." And so when you have a chance to go to the White House to talk about redress, I mean, somehow they found the money to do that. And the story was that Frank Sato was the highest appointee of Asian American ancestry of Governor Reagan, and he was the Inspector General of the EPA, and he frequently, he was part of a group that met in the White House frequently, I mean, at least monthly or so he would be in there, and he was the chairman of one of the subcommittees. Because Reagan wanted to cut government spending and make it more efficient, so he wanted to work right with the auditors and really make sure that they were always pushing, pushing, pushing on that. Well, through that contact, Frank got to know Jack Svahn pretty well, and Jack was President Reagan's top domestic policy advisor, and had also worked for Ronald Reagan in California, and ended up working for him for like twenty years during Reagan's political career. And he knew Ronald Reagan really well, and he was part of the, what they called the "California Mafia" that Reagan took back to Washington after he got elected president, people from his gubernatorial days. And so we went to the meeting, and at that meeting we gave him all, we had all this information that we used to pass out, and we were always updating it. And part of the things that we had in the packet was information about Ronald Reagan's 1945 speech that he made when he was Captain Reagan, not president, but just a young captain in the army, in the, I think, information corps or something at a funeral for Kazuo Masuda, a Nisei soldier who was killed in Italy, and he was a hero, too, the circumstances were heroic. Like holding off the enemy while people in his unit could retreat, and he did that a couple times, but the last time, he died. And so when Kazuo's body was sent back to California for burial, in Southern California, I think it was at Santa Anita, the people there refused to allow him to be buried. And I guess this upset General Stillwell in Washington, D.C.

TI: Right, "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell.

FS: "Vinegar Joe" Stillwell.

TI: And so, Floyd, I'm going to push you forward, because we have this story kind of already documented. But what I'm looking for is, so you gave Jack Svahn this information about the story, what Reagan had done, and how would you characterize the meeting in terms of the results of it? What was your feeling leaving that meeting?

FS: Well, Jack was very interested in it and said he knew a lot of Japanese Americans. But he was very interested in the Captain Reagan thing, and he felt like this was the issue that Ronald Reagan would warm to, and, in fact, he said in his opinion that if this legislation was passed and came to his desk, he thought that the President would sign it. I mean, this is based, not anything that Ronald Reagan had told him, but just having worked with him, this is like pure Reagan.

TI: And he said that during this meeting?

FS: He said that during this meeting.

TI: And this was August 10, 1984.

FS: Right. And ironically, Reagan signs the deal four years later on August 10, 1988, and so we had this meeting, it was positive, but at that time, neither of the bills had gone through Congress yet, and in fact, it would take another four years. But what we did know is after that meeting, Jack talked to the President about this at one of their weekly meetings of his top people, at least two different times, and reminded Ronald Reagan of his Captain Reagan speech. And I guess Ronald Reagan had a vague memory of that, but apparently he had gone to several funerals in his job, so he couldn't quite remember exactly what he said. But the amazing thing is that we had the text. So Jack Svahn became the advocate, because he brought it up a couple times with the President, and the President never disavowed or said he wasn't for redress, he always sounded interested, but then he was a little bit noncommittal.

TI: And this was critical later, because after Congress passed it, the bill was not veto-proof. And so if Reagan chose not to sign or to reject it, it would not have passed, so getting him to agree to this was critical.

FS: Right. Because there was a big faction on Reagan's staff was against it, and that's why a lot of this departments like State Department, OMB, the staff level sent out negative comments to Congress as it was going through.

TI: Just as a follow-up, Frank Sato has arranged for me to actually interview Jack Svahn, so I'll be doing that in the coming months, so that's something that we'll get more into the background.

FS: Good.

TI: Because this is actually new information that I think most historians have not heard.

FS: Right. The only reason why we know about it is Jack Svahn wrote a memoir and he talked about it. But then, not very many people read his book until recently, but now that Jack has talked about it, Frank feels like now he can publicly talk about this, where before, he kind of felt like it was like a confidential discussion with the administration.

TI: So, Floyd, we're at our limit here. Boy, there's another things I want to talk about, but maybe we're going to have to do another interview in the future, but we have to give up the studio for the next group. But just the one thing I want to do was, the reason I knew the date, August 10, 1984, was you brought a document that has that date. It's a document autographed by the full congressional --

FS: You want me to get it?

TI: Yeah, go ahead. Why don't you just hold it up? But it's the, after Personal Justice Denied was published, these two bills were introduced in Congress, these were the first redress bills -- not the first redress bills, but kind of the first redress bills after Personal Justice Denied on the House side and the Senate side. And it's signed by Senator Matsunaga, Senator Inouye, Representative Matsui and Representative Mineta. And the cool thing about this is they're signed to you, and again, the date, August 10, 1984, so that's how we knew that was also the date you met with Jack Svahn.

[Interruption]

FS: This a gift to me when I was going out of office as national president, and it was given to me at the Sayonara Banquet. Even though there are some nice words about me on it, I really accepted this on behalf of the national organization. And I have donated this to the Smithsonian Institute, this is a copy of it, but the Smithsonian, I believe, thinks this is a very important, and I think one-of-a-kind document, because nobody else has this.

TI: On that we'll end the interview, so thank you, Floyd, so much.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.