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TI: And you knew quite a bit. I mean, you talk about, you looked at Korematsu, you knew people in the community, you knew what happened. When Frank and the other members of the JACL came to you in that meeting, they presented, they talked with you, they gave you some documents, do you recall learning anything new that said, "I didn't know this," or, "This is kind of something that, in particular, I should bring this to the attention, to the president"? Was there something that... I'm guessing that when you first met with the group, there was no promise that you would say anything to the president.

JS: Oh, no.

TI: But you, at some point, decided, "I need to bring it to his attention." Was there something said that made you think that?

JS: No. And I didn't think that at the time. But I had been with Ronald Reagan for a long time, and by the second term there, when Ed Meese left and went to be the Attorney General, we were working on immigration. That was when the Simpson Mazzoli Bill was moving in the Congress. And Alan Simpson wanted to meet with the president. And he came down and he and I met with the president, he wanted to push his way of thinking. And when we were walking out of the Oval Office at the end of the meeting, and Al turned to me and he said, "Jack, you're from California. Why the heck are you guys not..." we used to have a Bracero program and we needed immigration reform. And he said, "Why are you guys not..." and I looked at him, I said, "Al, the guy in the Oval Office and me, we're the only two left." And in that long period of time, I learned to read Ronald Reagan fairly well. And one thing I knew was if he heard something, he remembered it. And, I mean, he would go sometimes off on a tangent, you might have to bring him back, but he remembered almost everything. And he knew, he had a little file in his desk drawer of quotes and facts that he had saved over years and years, but he knew exactly what was there and where it was.

TI: It's like his own little computer system, database.

JS: I don't know. I often thought, I wonder if that's the training he got as an actor.

TI: Oh, maybe, huh?

JS: I mean, he could read -- and in fact, in Sacramento, if you were taking something to the governor, it had to be on one page. And so, I mean, we did all kinds of, we adjusted margins, we did this and tried smaller print, all that kind of stuff, trying to get things to him. But when he, if you could succinctly state what the issue was and what your recommendation was on that one page, and he looked at it, he might come back to it six months later and know exactly what it was. I think that's what caused me to really bring the issue up was just the fact that I knew that he knew what the issue was, and it might be that he needed a little reminding, just so he remembered, like the speech he gave at the Hollywood Bowl in 1945. And he would remember, but somebody might have to tickle his memory a little bit, but he was very good at that. And so we would go to him with the issue and explain the background and he would listen to it. And it might not come up for a year, but when it did, he would remember.

TI: Or in this case, maybe four years. Because you met with him towards the end of '84, the legislation was signed in '88, that's almost four years later. And when he was signing, he told the story of that '45 Hollywood Bowl, the Nisei soldier Masuda and going to that memorial service, very powerful, powerful statement that he made that you essentially reminded him of that.

JS: Yeah, but I was thinking about whether it was '84 or '85, I'm pretty sure it was '85 because I know Reagan was there, and he would have only been there if he was the Chief of Staff and had moved over, and he moved over in January of '85.

TI: Okay, that would make sense.

JS: That was probably '85.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.