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LT: While you were working at City National Bank, you also became involved in the redress movement. Can you summarize that?

GI: Yeah. I attended a redress banquet at the Beverly Hills Hotel, which was our bank territory. So I was very familiar with it, and I remember it was being hosted by Tricia Toyota, who was a local anchorperson at the CBS newscast. And so I got some contacts, and I thought, okay, well, maybe I can apply my database knowledge to this effort. And I had already been a founder of the Information System Security Association, and I was serving on their local chapter board, and later I was to serve on the national board of directors as correspondent secretary. So I called JACCC over here and spoke to John Saito, and John directed me to someone in Chicago. And so the JACL guy in Chicago goes, "Oh, we're still doing that redress thing?" And I go, "Well, I don't know. We just had this big banquet here in Beverly Hills, I guess so." And he goes, "Well, call Grace Uyehara in Washington."

LT: Grace was?

GI: Grace Uyehara was the leader of the JACL legislative education committee. So she was the primary on the Capitol Hill lobbyists for the JACL. And then she goes, yeah, so she put me in touch with the guys who were currently managing their sponsor list and all that sort of thing, then I made recommendations on how they could upgrade their systems and do all that sort of thing. And then I got involved with the leadership. She put me in touch with the leadership of the redress movement here, and JACL and NCRR and whomever, and they put me in touch with this Chinese guy, Art Wong, who was really good at collecting names of people with money, I guess. So I would get all the names from him, and then I would take my fellow JACL board members and we would go on weekends to my City National job, don't tell anybody, and kind of pilfer their resources. They could sue me for this, but I think it was an honorable thing to do, and I really appreciate City National for allowing this to happen. And we would generate all the letters, I wrote the appeals letter and I would have George Ogawa sign them. And we would take Art Wong's list and type them all into the database and spit out address labels and slap everything together and post it, send it all around the country and, I guess, brought a good deal of money in.

LT: And you were recognized by JACL for your effort?

GI: Yes. There was a banquet that was hosted by another ABC anchor, Joanne Ishimine, and I remember me and George getting up at the end of the thing, because we were at the end of a long list of award recipients, got our little plaque.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2019 Densho. All Rights Reserved.