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AI: Well, I want to bring us up closer to the present and ask you about the time when some people were involved in the redress movement. Asking the U.S. government to review the wartime incarceration. And was wondering what you heard about that or what you thought about that effort?

KM: Well, like I said before, I really didn't expect it, to tell you the truth, after so many years back. When we first came out of camp with nothing, that's when we really could have used it. So I didn't depend upon it or I didn't even realize that, or I mean I didn't even think that it's gonna become a reality. And around that time then, my husband and I did a lot of traveling. We went to Europe and different places, and then the people that was in the tour, they would say, they all asked us, "What do you think about this redress?" And I said, "Well, we won't believe it 'til it really becomes a reality. I'm not even counting on it." "Oh?" And that was the really truth. I mean I just didn't count on it or...

AI: Why did you think that it wouldn't happen?

KM: Well, if it happened right after the camp, then it would be so fresh yet that we had lost so many things. But after we struggled and come back where, well, we weren't well off, but at least we were comfortable. And I just didn't think that it was, it just didn't come on time. [Laughs] 'Cause we had to start from -- used car, and everything had to be started all over again. And so we could have really appreciated it more I think, when it came, when we really needed it. And so when the time had elapsed so long, I really didn't think that all that effort wasn't gonna be, come to a fruition. I really didn't think so. But I was quite surprised. And so when they started to pass it on, everything, well, we said, "Well, if they're gonna give it to us, we'll just accept it." But what we did with our money was we donated it to tithed it, tenth of it to different missionary group. Because we felt so thankful that we got something that we didn't expect. Some people bought brand new car, some people bought new houses and so forth, with that, to make it count, but, that's what we did.

AI: Well, now that was about 1990 I think when the first payments started coming out. And so around that time there started to be some more publicity again about...

KM: Yeah, yeah.

AI: ...what had happened in the camps.

<End Segment 47> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.