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TI: And since we're in 1984, let me just pause for another event because Frank Sato would want me to do this. So 1984, you're right, this is after Personal Justice Denied has been issued, and there are bills issued in both the House and the Senate, and again you said there would be other iterations of that. At the same time this was going on, and this was towards the end of Floyd Shimomura's term as national director...

JT: Almost at the end, yeah, days.

TI: Just days, and, in fact, the reason I know this becuase he brought this nice document signed by the two senators and two representatives for this. But during that time, there was also a meeting you were involved with, with Jack Svahn in the White House. Tell me a little bit about how you heard about this and your sense of the meaning of that meeting.

JT: You know, I'd had some meetings with the White House. I mean, when you talk about the White House, everyone thinks it's that building. There's the Old Executive Office building off to the side, big, ornate building, that's where most of the work gets done. The West Wing is where only certain people get access to. So I was having meetings every now and then over at Old Executive Offices, OEO, whatever it is, Old Executive Office Building, OEOB.

TI: And who were you meeting with over there?

JT: Various people who were in, like, domestic policy. I mean, these were not high level people, because unless you have an inside contact, you don't get over into the White House. I think I had one meeting in the White House itself. Most of my contacts or meetings were over at the OEOB, and I did not know Jack Svahn at all. I'd kind of heard his name, I mean, he was pretty high up there, he was, I think, number three in the White House, on the West Wing. And then Ikejiri called me and said, "We have a meeting with Jack Svahn." As I recall, my reaction was, "Domestic policy guy?" And he said, "Yeah, Frank Sato set this up." And so I happened to be... this was at a time when I had gone back to San Francisco to be there for a little while, so I flew out and we went to the White House. Frank had set this meeting up because he knew Jack. He used to meet with him regularly as an IG, meeting with someone in the White House. So he had personal relationships with Jack as well as a number of other people in the West Wing of the White House. So we have this meeting, and Frank had asked for materials. And Carole Hayashino, who was my assistant -- and I hired her mainly to do research, because she's great at that -- had put a package together earlier. And this was the one, the Masuda, the famous Masuda package that got distributed to a number of different people.

TI: Now, did you know that story and told Carole to research it, or you guys were just sitting on the story?

JT: No, we had done research, in fact, Carole and Bill Yoshino and I went on a research trip, because we needed documents. And so we started with Roger Daniels in Cincinnati, Roger being one of the main authors of books about internment, and he had agreed to let us go through his files, so we made copies of all kinds of stuff from Roger. Then we went to New York, drove up to Hyde Park to the Roosevelt Library and did research there. And then we went down to D.C. to the National Archives. Carole was in heaven, she loved this stuff. I found it really tedious, but you learn when you run a campaign, you need the research. So we were really kanshin about this, and worked long days and blurry eyes and all that, but going through thousands and thousands of documents. We came back, had a bunch of it shipped to us, because you can't walk out of the National Archives, so we collected all our stuff and she went down to San Bruno, I guess it is, for the collection there, that's where she found the Masuda materials and the Reagan statement.

TI: So Carole's the one who found this story?

JT: Yeah. So she puts the package together, and anytime I was doing something publicly, I would tell her, "I'm going to go over here to do this, you have anything I can take?" and she would give me documents, you know, based on what I was going to be talking about. She was a great researcher. In fact, I recommended to Jodie Bernstein that they hire Carole.

TI: Oh, for the redress?

JT: Yeah, for the commission research staff. But, you know, they hired Aiko. And one of the reasons why, I found out later, is that Jodie really didn't want to be perceived as having a contact with the JACL. She was really careful about that, and rightfully so, we're the ones who pushed this bill. So anyway, we go to this meeting and --

TI: But when you first found out about that story, about Kazuo Masuda, what was your reaction when Carole says, "I have something here"?

JT: Quite honestly, the only thing I can remember was saying, "Holy shit," and I asked her, "Where'd you find this?" She said, "I was down at the archive," and it was incredible.

TI: I mean, you couldn't ask for something better.

JT: Yeah, because you know by then, Ronald Reagan was the President, and this was really important to us. So that was her baby, she's the one who... I never touched that file. It was in my office, but I never ever touched that. That was Carole's. And anything that came of that was a growth of what she did.

TI: And were you sitting on this? I mean, I don't see a lot of evidence that this was well-known. I mean, it was pretty quiet.

JT: We kept it pretty much, kind of waiting for the moment, sort of thing.

TI: And this was, going back to the Svahn meeting...

JT: Jack Svahn. This is the file that Frank carried into the White House. And he talked to Svahn about this, we met. Lou Hayes, who was Svahn's deputy, was in the meeting with us. So there's Frank Sato, Ron... no, Ron Wakabayashi --

TI: No, it was Ron Ikejiri.

JT: Ron Ikejiri was there, Floyd and me. And what I was going to say is I don't understand why Wakabayashi wasn't there, he was the national director, for whatever reason. But there were the four of us, and we let Frank do most of the talking. Every now and then he would ask me something, point of historical fact or something. And I was used to being in that setting, as Ikejiri was, and so it wasn't like this was any huge deal, but it was a huge deal. I mean, we're talking to the number three guy in the White House. My sense, when we came out of there, is, "We don't know anything," and this is how politics worked. You do what you can, you never know which thing is going to trigger something. So this meeting was really important to us because Frank said, "Jack talks to the President constantly." Well, we found out later, years later, in fact recently, that in Svahn's memoir, he talks about the issues lunch where twice he mentioned it to Reagan. One thing that I found out in this forum we just did the other day, where the five of us were there, Frank, Floyd, Wakabayashi, me, and Ikejiri. What I didn't understand was what had happened in the White House after that. And it percolated up from that meeting. Whether or not Reagan was impressed by Svahn at their issues lunch, which is a select group of people who meet with the President once a week and bring up their issues. Twice he brings up internment and this bill that's out there coming to the White House. But he indicates in his memoir there's no reaction by Reagan. And Svahn wasn't even sure if it penetrated, but he says in there one thing, which is he thought the President would be favorable to this issue, to this bill, because one thing about Reagan is that it's really important to him to right a wrong. I saw that, when I read that, it made absolute sense to me what Svahn was saying when he said, "I'm pretty sure he's going to sign this bill when it comes to him."

TI: Well, and to add to this story, so through communications -- because he's still alive, Jack Svahn.

JT: You should interview him.

TI: Yeah, we're scheduling it right now.

JT: Great, great.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.