Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Henry Miyatake Interview V
Narrator: Henry Miyatake
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 14, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-mhenry-05-0022

<Begin Segment 22>

HM: But then the following year, January, of course, Sam Shoji took over as president. And so Sam was more gung ho on redress than Ben was. [Laughs] So Sam took it upon himself to try to organize redress in a more substantial manner. And we put it to a vote in Seattle chapter and they adopted the plan that we set forth. And then he tried to get the Northwest Regional District Council to support it and we had a -- we set up two days for the education of these people because this was a problem: educating Japanese Americans. It's a issue that, they really don't understand the terms of the constitutionality of the process that we went through. And the people that I thought we would have the easiest time, it turned out to be the most difficult. And this was surprising to me. I thought these guys, they're smart enough to understand the Constitution and all this kind of material. They were able to understand the Hirabayashi case. So I thought for sure that these guys would be supportive, but they turned out to be the worst opposition. And well --

TI: Why do you think that was? Why do you think they had the strongest opposition from within the community?

HM: Well, there's two strong opposition functions. One is that they thought we would rock the boat. This is a very controversial issue, especially when we demand monies from the U.S. Congress for damages that were done to us. And it would damage the reputation and integrity of Nikkei Americans. That was one point of view. And the other was, you're demeaning the character of Japanese Americans to go after money. And maybe the other point of view was saying, "Hey, we're making enough progress. Don't do anything that would prevent us from making more progress." And well, Eira Nagaoka, through his Reverend Nagano, Paul Nagano was the minister at Seattle Baptist Church. And Eira said, "I want you to talk to the reverend." And so in the first conversation Nagano asked me, "What are you trying to do in this process?" And of course the two years previous to that I had been out to Baptist Church and we were pitching Keiro Nursing home and we were trying to raise money. [Laughs]

TI: Was it the Keiro nursing home, or the Cultural Center?

HM: No, Keiro nursing home.

TI: It was Keiro. Okay.

HM: We were trying to raise the four hundred forty thousand dollars to buy that property, on Massachusetts Street. And I had used the same pitch, pitch chart, flip chart presentation. And so he felt -- he supported us very strongly on that Keiro nursing home project. And when I told him what I was trying to do he said, "Well, we have an adult discussion group; if you feel like presenting it, we'd like to have it as a discussion item." So I said, "Well, let me give you a personal presentation first, and then if you feel kindly to it, then maybe we can make it to the entire group." And he agreed to that. We did that. And he was very responsive. He thought gee, gosh, this is a good collection of information. And just for information's sake I'm sure that the people would be interested in listening to you. And he was very encouraging about it. And I had received a so-called so-so attitude from the JACL. And here's this church minister saying, "Hey, we want to have this as a moral and community issue." So I made the presentation and they were very supportive of that. And then I decided, "Hey Chuck, you're a big wheel at the Blaine Methodist and you're a big wheel in the Nisei Vets. Why don't we try to get out to all these different organizations and we'll try to get a flavor of how much support we can get?"

TI: But then going back to the Baptists, the response actually was positive? Earlier you mentioned how there was strong opposition within the community, but you didn't feel it at the Baptist church?

HM: Well, JACL happened to be kind of an interesting mixture of individuals. Min Masuda in the beginning was not supportive of redress. In fact he, this is the reason why Ben Nakagawa tabled the motion in December because Min got to Ben and said, "Hey, this is a very controversial issue. We've got to be careful about what we do with this thing."

TI: So the opposition you were talking about was more JACL-centered? Not necessarily the whole community?

HM: Well, on top of that Min was very highly regarded. And I respect a lot of the things that Min was trying to do. And he was involved with the Pride and Shame exhibit and things of this nature. And I respected his viewpoint. But he felt that it was so controversial that we had better be careful about how we make these presentations and how we expose ourselves to the public. And so anyway, Ben decided to table it and he'd leave it for the next president to take care of.

<End Segment 22> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.