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HM: But I thought to myself, the higher up you go in this process, in the Nikkei population, the less support you get.

TI: You say the "higher up." What do you mean by the "higher up," the older, or the more prominent? I don't quite understand when you say "higher up."

HM: Well, okay like in the JACL for instance, in the chapter, to get it past the chapter approval system was one step of difficulty. You get to the regional area, to prevent what was happening in the chapter area, we learned a lesson. The thing that we need to educate these people a little bit on what really happened to us and what the damages were. So in the district council meeting, we had two days of education process. I mean, we're talking six hours at a whack, for two days, twelve hours of education. And even at that when it came to a vote it was not unanimous. It was like sixty-forty. And so I thought man, this is gonna be uphill battle. At the lower level you can get to the people. You can make rational conversation with them. Dialogue becomes more difficult because they have other interests involved in the process, you know, preservation of the Nikkei reputation, and all this kind of stuff that's completely non-quantitative. And I learned this when I went to the National Board meeting in San Francisco. They wouldn't take action on it. They decided to take a alternative action by putting what you call a legislative education committee together. So I use the terminology that Drucker uses occasionally, he says, there's darkness at the top of the stairs. And it prevails at any large organization. The higher up you go, the less informed they are about these different subject areas and the less they care because there's other considerations to be made. Just like in Boeing company. We were trying to get them to do things like 727, the 777 program way early on, make big engines and reduce the number of engines, and all this kind of stuff, reduce the number of systems. But we never got to the top management because there are too many filters going up the ladder. And this was the same case in the JACL. And in Joel Pritchard's case where it's totally different, because here's a congressman and he says, "Man, I know what happened to you guys because I had classmates that were evacuated. I sympathize with what you guys are doing and I want to help you." And he goes to the extent of -- we had these audio tapes made, of the appeal for action, and he had copies made of 'em and he was sending them out to his friends, cohorts in Congress. And then he gets a message from Mineta saying, "Hey, I speak for Japanese Americans, you know. I don't want you in this activity." So Pritchard says, okay, fine.

TI: Interesting.

<End Segment 25> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.