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BY: And why do you say, "History may not always repeat itself, but it often rhymes"?

TI: It's kind of like what you can imagine. So if I say, oh, the Muslim travel ban is just like what happened to Japanese Americans in terms of racial profiling or profiling, people will say, well, it's not the same. You're talking about Japanese Americans, two-thirds U.S. citizens, you're talking about people who are coming in. But the way it rhymes is in terms of when you, first you demonize a group, you have these negative stereotypes, you position them as being dangerous. You then have policies based on the group versus the individual, those are the things that I now say they rhyme versus rather than the same. So it's trying to say there are similarities, and yes, they're not exactly the same. And it's important for us to know the differences and to be able to talk about them, but to also talk about the similarities, and I think "rhyming" is a good way of doing that.

BY: Do you think an overarching lesson in the experience is that elected officials are easily swayed, cowed, or made skittish by hysteria amongst their constituents? Which I think is... which makes Densho and the Council on American-Islamic Relations, all the more important because I think this is a facet of American life. I'm curious if you agree.

TI: Oh, I agree. I mean, when you look at the findings of Personal Justice Denied, when they did redress, the three causes were war hysteria, racial prejudice and a failure of political leadership. And people ask me, so what does political leadership look like, or what could it look like? And actually, I use an example, and I do this intentionally, it's with George W. Bush. And this is told to me by Secretary Norm Mineta when he was Secretary of Transportation. And so two or three days after the terrorist attacks on September 11th, there was a cabinet meeting with top congressional leaders, and there were reports and rumors in the Dearborn, Michigan, area, where there's a large Arab American population, that there were plans to do camps or to ban them, Arab Americans, from flying and all these things. And George W., when he heard that, he said, "Absolutely not." And he turned to Norm and says, "We are not going to do what we did to Norm and Japanese Americans." And later on that week he came out with his "Islam is Peace" talk. I think George W. is problematic in terms of how things kind of worked out, but at that moment, that's an example of political leadership. That you publicly come out and you acknowledge these fears, you have the awareness of what happened. When Norm tells this story, he said part of what's great about this story is a few months before 9/11, he was a guest at Camp David with George W. And Norm talks about how George W. is notorious for being, going to bed early, he doesn't stay up late. But he said one night, George asked Norm, "Tell me about what happened during World War II." And Norm says he actually stayed up pretty late and heard Norm's story. And so when -- and I think that mattered. And so I think, later on, when he said, "No, we're not going to do what we did to Norm and Japanese Americans," it was with this knowledge and awareness. And then took it another step further by having his "Islam is Peace" talk. So that's an example of political leadership that I would love to see, and obviously we don't have right now.

BY: It's hard to even imagine.

TI: I know, I know.

BY: Even just the curiosity. [Laughs]

TI: But I like that story because for people who are, like Republican or conservative, to hear that story and to say, "You know, it's not partisan. This is what we stand for."

BY: Boy, can we get back to the good old days, huh?

TI: I'm not going there. [Laughs]

BY: One thing that surprises me is to learn that these Democratic members of Congress in the state of Washington, Warren Magnuson, "Scoop" Jackson, Mon Wallgren, were, supported removal and incarceration. And then Jackson and Wallgren were even opposed to resettlement when the camps were closed. I'm curious about your thought on this, Tom. Do you think history doesn't care much about prudence and nuance and that it imposes its own kind of ruthless justice as to whether people are on the right side or wrong side of issues?

TI: Whether history does? I think as... how I view it is the power of history is it's not black and white, it does feel nuanced. I mean, earlier in my career I was a chemist, chemical engineer, did a lot of software development, and a lot of that work tends to be more black and white in terms of how things are. I mean, the thing that I...

BY: Binary.

TI: Yeah, binary, exactly. And what I have appreciated about the work I do now in history is, especially when we dive into the stories of people, it's very non-binary. It's very nuanced, it's open to interpretation. And that's good for me because it helps me to question what's right or wrong, or is there a right or wrong. I think you have perspective, and I love kind of the use of historical thinking about, again, issues, and just saying, okay, so who's saying it, what's their perspective, why might they be thinking that or saying that. And it does provide, I think, avenues for people to come together and actually work together, versus a more binary, well, if you think that, then you're this, and there's not that space to come together. Whereas history, through stories, and you can tell the stories from a different perspective, you can kind of understand why things happened and why it progressed to certain things. And at points where it could have been so different, and I think that's the beauty and power of history, and I've come to appreciate and learn that so much. And I've come to learn the importance of the individual, and that's why I am speaking out more and doing more, because you realize that, historically, one person can really make a difference. And to not feel like it is like it's predestined, that things are doing, that it's actually, we know from the stories that something happened. Because it may be serendipitous, or something, but somebody was influenced, and it changed the course of history, and that to me is exciting.

BY: One reason I ask that is because one of the great values of practicing journalism is you learn how complicated stories are, and you may go in thinking they're black and white, but you rarely come out thinking that. And that's what's important about that sense of balance and fairness, talking to multiple people. But when I was reading Born in Seattle, and at the end where you see some of the congressional delegation wavering or agonizing, and some of it may be legitimate handwringing like in the case of Al Swift, it seems, but I'm just cringing when I read Rod Chandler and Don Bonker's responses, and they might be invoking prudence in terms of the financial matters, they've got to worry about the government purse strings, blah, blah, blah. But you're reading it and it becomes rather binary at times, and it's just like, no, you're on the wrong side of history, man, and that's all there is to this. So anyway, I'm sorry for that little bit of editorializing. [Laughs]

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 2020 Densho. All Rights Reserved.