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Title: Ben Takeshita Interview
Narrator: Ben Takeshita
Interviewer: Virginia Yamada
Location: Emeryville, California
Date: March 11, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1000-467-12

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So I worked for the state, now called Employment Development Department, but I worked for them for forty-two years and graduated in January, I mean, August of the year 2000, so I've been retired for eighteen years. So I retired in the year 2000 in August, and after I retired, I just didn't do anything, didn't set an alarm, and just wake up when I wanted to and so on. But come December of that year, I felt so sluggish and didn't feel right. So come January of 2001, I started going to the local Richmond YMCA to do the exercises. So ever since then, I've been going Monday through Friday and work with my arms and legs, equipment and so on to lift. And I used to lift about 54,000 pounds a day, and then developed hernia after a fashion because I was straining myself, so I stopped doing that. And now I continue the same exercises but less weight, about 18,000 pounds a day. And I do that Monday through Friday, and then, in the meantime, when I was working, I didn't get a chance to, but when I retired then I have more time, so I started bowling, and now I bowl three times a week. And then I'm learning how to golf now to get some outdoor experience, so doing that, and so bought some clubs and so on, and doing that and enjoying my retirement life.

But, in the meantime, while I'm doing that, while I was going to school and working for the Department of Employment, I decided... I was active with the Japanese American Citizens League, and so there were things about redress that started to be talking, and Edison Uno was one of the leaders who was helping out from the Los Angeles standpoint. He was from that area and also San Francisco, and was talking about trying to get redress from the U.S. government. And John Okada, I think it was, who wrote the book No-No Boy, he got a hold of me because he got my name and he sent me his manuscript before he finalized it into a book. And he wanted me to read it, but I didn't have time to read it, so I regret doing that.

VY: About when was this? What year do you think that was?

BT: That was in the 1960s, I think it was. And what happened was that we were with the Japanese American Citizens League that I was active in. I started to do that, and some of them were 442nd, which was the Nisei army team that became famous in the European stage. And two of the veterans came up to me who lived in Richmond and said, "Ben, forget about redress. Just don't rock the boat anymore, just forget about it and let bygones be bygones, and let it go at that." Because in those days, being in camp and so on wasn't very popular, they didn't talk about it, and so a lot of people didn't want to talk about it, especially about Tule Lake and the "loyalty questionnaire" and that kind of thing. So I thought, well, we'd better find out, so the Northern California, Western Nevada, Pacific District Council, which is northern California, Nevada and Japan, Hawaii and so on, and so we send them a questionnaire out asking them if they are interested in doing redress. And John Tateishi was one of the people from San Francisco State College, he was the chair of this committee, and he tried to see if the membership was willing to go for redress. And by golly, over eighty percent of the people responded saying, "Yes, go for it." So we started out with about seventy-five thousand dollars per person, but then it got dwindled down, dwindled down to where it came down to twenty-thousand dollars per person. But then the veterans also then, once it started moving, they began to help with the redress movement and was able to help get the congressmen and senators to back us on this program. And because of what the 442nd did in Europe and so on, they were in a big push trying to get redress going. So thank goodness for their help. It took us twenty years, but we were able to get the redress moving.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.