<Begin Segment 26>

TI: Let's go back locally. So after the Nisei Vets, other local organizations, any opposition?

HM: We thought we weren't getting good feedback, so -- I tried one out in a kinda spontaneous group, just to try to get their feelings, and these were some of my friends. And I thought before we did the Baptist Church one I better get a consensus of how a normal individual not affiliated with JACL or any other organization would feel about it. And they were my friends and I said, "I want your candid opinion on what you feel about this thing if I made a presentation for a group and you were in that group." And they said, well, for one thing they're not gonna speak out affirmatively or negatively on your presentation unless they feel very strongly about it. And most Nikkei will not do that. So you gotta give 'em a chance to put it down in their own private communication to you. So that's what we decided. And in the Baptist Church one, we gave everybody a form and asked them if they agreed with the presentation's main ideals and so forth. And would you support us in this kind of activity and we gave them an option of signing their name to the thing, or putting in any other suggestions that they would like to sound out. And a lot of them wouldn't give us the form back. They just kept their paper.

TI: And why do you think that?

HM: Because they wanted to reserve their feelings, and they didn't have strong enough conclusions that they would want to specify these.

TI: So similar to what your early group said: that people wouldn't want to express an opinion one way or the other unless they had really strong opinions.

HM: So, but the ones that we did get at Baptist Church were very positive. I think there was only one negative one in the whole Baptist Church collection. Then my next one, my personal next one was the St. Peters and we did get quite a few negative ones there. And I was surprised. They said that we were gonna destroy the reputation of Japanese America. The fact that our parents and others had worked so hard to put us into this good position, we're gonna destroy it by going and making an issue of this thing. And I guess this type of feeling persisted in a lot of individuals. One of our intents, the reason why we said we were doing this, one of the objectives was to make this area of American history, clarify to the American public. And make it a known subject rather than having it subverted to a under the table situation. And the truth is more important than trying to hide what history was like. And anyway, I had all the list of objectives of why we're doing this. And Chuck and I, we used to talk about this thing after every meeting and say if they made a suggestion that we want to incorporate, let's put it in there. So the pitch was an evolving process. And Chuck didn't like some of the charts I made so I said, "Chuck, you make up the ones you want to make up." So we really had a general format that was similar to the stuff that we were presenting to everybody, and then some of the stuff like our flow charts on the money flow, Chuck wanted to -- he used to say, "Your damn charts are so damn complex that nobody can make sense out of it except you." So he used to revise those charts. And he did a better job I think on presenting the flow charts than I did. And mine were a little bit too complex, but I was in system engineering format -- these logic modes and all that kind of crap. [Laughs]

TI: I'm curious. Given, especially Chuck's relationship with the Buddhist Church, how did the Buddhist Church react to your proposal?

HM: Well, Chuck made a presentation for the Buddhist Church. He volunteered to do that.

TI: And how did that go?

HM: Well, I did it for the Dharma group which is an adult group. And Fred Imanishi at that time was very active in the Buddhist Church and he was one of the few guys in the Buddhist Church that I used to agree with in principle and some of their activities. And Fred was a good friend of my brother's and I knew Fred Imanishi for a long time. And in the Dharma group it was a pretty friendly exchange. It was done on an adult level of conversation. And the rationale was given to them and they more or less agreed with it. But for the board when Chuck made the presentation it was different, completely different.

TI: And what was the reaction? What happened?

HM: Well they were just like, they're sitting there and no emotional response, no rebuttals, no nothing. And they just said they'll think about it. And they didn't support it. But the Dharma group --

TI: Out of curiosity, why did the group decide to let Chuck do it given just two years ago or whatever that --

HM: Chuck volunteered for it. [Laughs] He took it on as a challenge. He thought he was gonna be able to turn these guys around.

TI: Because I would imagine Chuck had, must have felt some bitterness...

HM: Yeah, well he did --

TI: ...towards the Buddhist Church because of his project.

HM: But he felt that this was the way to redeem himself. But he volunteered for it. I said hey, I took on the Dharma group so I'm willing to do it for these guys, and he said, "No, I'll do it."

TI: Well, as a group did you ever talk about sort of, strategically or tactically who would be better at one versus the other?

HM: Well, this is why we volunteered for different groups. Like for instance I took on St. Peters because Sam Shoji said, he invited me personally to do it so I felt comfortable with that. And then the hakujin churches I used to take on, especially on the east side because they -- a lot of them were interested in the subject and they felt that morally that there was some burden on the churches to have supported the Nikkei. And if you know the actual Seattle Greater Council of Churches, they supported the evacuation. They supported what the federal government did. The only person that really put up a fight was Father Tebbisar of Maryknoll. He's the only guy that I know of, and Reverend Andrews did, but they weren't able to influence the council. So...

<End Segment 26> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.