<Begin Segment 24>

TI: Okay, so let's go back to the reaction of the Nisei Vets and you said you presented to them. So what happened at that meeting?

HM: Well Chuck was the presenter at the Nisei Vets meeting. And I thought this was going to be duck soup. No problem.

TI: Now why did you think it was going to be duck soup? Because you were all veterans? You're all Nisei?

HM: Yeah. Veterans. I thought we were fighting for same ideals, same principles. You know, you put up your right hand and you swear to uphold the Constitution of the United States. I thought everybody knew what the Constitution represented. And as I went along in this whole process I found that a lot of people would say they uphold the Constitution of the United States and yet they don't really understand what the Constitution has stated, and what the Bill of Rights guarantees. But at the Vets meeting -- it started off friendly enough. Chuck did a pretty good job of presenting the data.

TI: Now were you at the meeting also?

HM: Yeah, Ken Nakano, myself and --

TI: Now why did you choose Chuck and not you to present the data?

HM: Well, because he was a Nisei Vets member.

TI: Okay.

HM: And he was a pretty high visibility person. And he had taken part in lotta the activities. And of course Shuzo and the rest of his family had been strong participants in the Nisei Vets and he knew a lot of those guys. And I knew some of the people, but not to the extent that Chuck knew 'em. So anyway, Chuck volunteered for that job. And we used to volunteer for different functions, and I used to take different churches and Chuck would take the other ones that I didn't feel like presenting to. So there was a kind of a common agreement. And then Ken would take all the Nikkeijinkais and kenjinkais and so forth. So, well Chuck felt that this was gonna be just, just goin' down the road type situation. So initially when he started off the presentation everybody was pretty comfortable with it. And when we started talkin' about the monetary situation, then there started coming a bunch of questions from the floor without Chuck wanting to respond to some of 'em because they were kinda strong points, anyway. And towards the end, gee, they started, they were shouting at him and making all kinds of statements. By the time he finished and they opened it up for question and answers, it became a very heated discussion. "Why are you guys doing this?" And one guy stood up and said, "Really, the things that we fought for, you're trying to undo. This is creating a total change of direction from our objective," and stuff like that. And as things progressed, it got to a point where one of the guys stood up and called him a traitor. And Chuck didn't take too kindly to that because he had lost one of his brothers in the army. And he made a rebuttal and it became another rebuttal and it became very heated and it got to a point where they were ready to swing at each other. [Laughs]

TI: And where were you? I mean, what was your role? Were you an active participant or were you --

HM: Yeah. I was trying to respond to some of the things that Chuck couldn't handle and I was yelling at the other guys just as much as they were yelling at us. And I thought to myself, oh gee, we're faced with an interesting proposition here. Well, at that point we were asking for some funding support so that we could carry on the program. And I thought well, I guess we should forget about getting any funds from these guys. But as it turned out, they had another meeting after that and they agreed to fund us for a hundred bucks.

TI: That's interesting. So although there was strong opposition, it must have meant that the majority of the people there were actually in support of what you had to say and wanted to fund it? Or, how do you interpret that? I guess I don't understand.

HM: Well, I had a private meeting with the president of the, I mean the commander of the Nisei Vets after that. And I said, "Hey, you guys are sworn to uphold the Constitution of the United States, and your oath of office, all your elected officers are required to do this, and all your board members are required to do this. In the Constitution of the United States, that's what it says." And I laid it down to him. You should be able to go after redress, I mean that's part of the Constitution. And these things were, stuff they did to us were violation of constitutional rights that we have. They have no right to put us into a camp for unlimited time period. They had no right to gather up our parents and put 'em into internment facility separate from us. And they -- we don't have a due process of law. We were never indicted for anything. We never violated any of these crimes, no espionage, no federal, state, or city type laws. And he had to agree with me. And so I don't know if that had an influence on what they finally decided or not. But anyway they did give us a hundred bucks for some of the programs they were involved in.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.