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BN: Now, through the mid-'80s, there's a succession of bills that are going through this legislative process, but then in '87, there's this, you decide to do this big lobbying trip, because this House bill is being heard. Yeah, wonder if you could talk about that.

KM: Well, I'm going to have to go to Jim for this, because I don't remember how some of these ideas came up. I think Jim says that Alan had this idea -- [coughs] -- excuse me, of going to Washington, D.C., putting everything. And then Jim felt, yeah, let's throw the whole treasury into this, this is like do or die. And so then we said, "Yeah, we should get as many people to go as possible. This is a great opportunity to get people to actually organize and grassroots and be in Washington, D.C., and let's raise money." So I'm going to claim this idea, but my sister and I said, "Well, a lot of people can't go, but they can donate, maybe here and there." So let's get this idea of bringing these ribbons. And one ribbon with their name on it is twenty dollars. So we raised money, and everybody that donated twenty dollars had a ribbon. So those ribbons went to Washington, D.C., if you remember. We put them up everywhere we went. So it's like they were there, too. So the idea was that we brought our community with us, maybe a hundred and forty or so or less, people were able to go, but everybody else was with us, too, and supporting that. So yeah, but the organizing was from all across NCRR, so not just L.A. San Francisco, San Jose, so people from all over, and JACL chapters, some JACL folks came on the lobbying. I can't speak a lot about the interaction with JACL, that was more like people like Bert and maybe Alan. I never operated on that level, I was always the outreach and community type thing.

BN: And then you went on the trip, though, right?

KM: Yeah.

BN: I mean, what were your memories of actually going?

KM: Well, I have to say, I didn't feel that effective, because I think we were visiting people, they were not as critical, I guess. And a lot of the visits, people, we met with the aides. But it was exciting to see everybody there, and talking to different congresspeople and engaging. For me, personally, the actual visits were not that impactful because we talked to aides and they all said, "Oh, yeah, we supported it. We think it's the right thing to do, but there's no money." That's all they ever said, "There's no money." And then I do remember the demonstration at the South African consulate where we were able to hold a demonstration, which was good, in D.C. In my mind, it was good, but personally, I don't know how much I was I was impacted by meeting congresspeople or not meeting congresspeople. Was it worth doing? Yeah. I mean, even though you don't know how much impact you're making. The best part for me was going to New York after that with Evelyn and staying at the Kochiyamas'.

BN: Where were you when you heard that the House had passed the bill?

KM: Was I at home? I might have been at... you know, I feel like we had, I don't know if we had word. We organized pretty quickly a celebration at the JACCC, like almost the next night or that night. I mean, I don't remember where I was, I feel like I was watching it, maybe, on C-SPAN. I'm not sure if somebody called to say that, but I feel like we all rushed down to the JACCC, or we were ready... I could be wrong, but I feel like we might have known. Because we were actually, we did a celebration at the JACCC, and Alan and I were co-chairs at the time, so we had to speak, and we had people ready to speak to them, a Nisei spoke, because media was there. So it could have been night, it could have been the next night, but we rushed down, it was like scrambling, quick. We had food, so much have prepared.

BN: What was your own feeling?

KM: You know, it was all moving very fast. I mean, I think it was kind of unbelievable. The whole thing was unbelievable because it was moving so fast, especially the first one.

BN: When you first started it, did you believe that this was possible, really?

KM: No. I don't think any of us ever said that, but it was kind of like a feeling like you just have to do it. This is what we have to do, we're committed to doing it, it's kind of hard keeping up with momentum, there were periods of, like, nothing's happening, and it's very hard to keep a campaign when things are happening far away like in Washington, especially legislation. What do you do to keep people engaged? So fortunately we had the JAPSS campaign that wanted to stop that salon, and we got more people to join us, and just different things that kept it alive, our work alive. Things went down, things went up, but we just kept on going. I don't know if there's anything else that was demanding our attention that much.

<End Segment 19> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.