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-05-0029

<Begin Segment 29>

HM: And during that meeting the only person outside, well Edison Uno was a guest of that board meeting, and Tomio was National Treasurer for JACL. So Tomio kinda shied away from making any inputs, but Edison was the only guy that related to the subject. Because he had made these national resolutions on reparations every other year for, since 1970.

TI: And what was Edison's response? What did he say?

HM: Oh, he was supportive of it. And in fact, after the presentation he says, "Hey, if we knew you guys had an integrated total plan, we would have supported you from the very beginning." Well, Edison stood for block grants, and we were after individual payments because that's -- our individual constitutional rights were violated in my way of thinking. But in Edison's case, well, he said block grants to different organizational functions would be best entertained. I had strong opposition with that and it took me all of maybe two years before I convinced Edison that we have to go through individual payment basis. But he was very frank with me, and we had dinner together and we talked a lot about --

TI: Was this your first really, opportunity to talk to Edison Uno?

HM: Yes. I had talked to him on the phone, but this was the first personal contact I had with him. And Tomio arranged dinner and we all went out together. So Jim Tsujimura, who was vice president of JACL National, Tomio, he was treasurer, and Edison, and myself, we had dinner at this restaurant --

TI: Well, when you think about that first meeting, face to face with Edison Uno, how would you characterize where his thinking -- you mentioned the block grant --

HM: Yeah.

TI: And then your plan. You said he mentioned how if he knew about your plan it could have been integrated with some of his thinking...

HM: No.

TI: ...into a total package? Explain that a little bit more about where he was versus where you were.

HM: His position was he would just make the resolution every year from his supporting chapter in San Francisco, and present it at the national convention and they would pass it. And it was done. It was passed in 1970, '72 and '74.

TI: And what was he hoping? By doing that it would do what? I mean what was his hope?

HM: It would cause people like Barry Matsumoto to kick the organization in the butt and make it do something.

TI: So it was more like a top down approach...

HM: Yeah.

TI: ...of this is sort of where we're going and you guys figure it out?

HM Yeah.

TI: Okay.

HM: Okay. And in Edison's case, he used to write this article in the Pacific Citizen as a "Minority of One." And I never understood why should he title it "Minority of One." And so, I think it was the second meeting I had with him, I said, "Edison, what is this thing about 'Minority of One'?" Well, his organizations, he had a number of them by the way, he was the only member of that organization. And he would go to the San Francisco City Council and say that he is the representative for this organization. And it would be a legitimate organization because he had it registered. And he would represent himself as the representative, and he would make this spiel in front of the San Francisco City Council. And this is what he was doing. So the "Minority of One" represented that kind of action. I never realized that. [Laughs] And this was how he got a lot of the inputs to the City Council. He was very organized in that fashion and he felt that trying to make a committee, especially in the chapter that he worked with, they didn't necessarily agree with everything he wanted to do. So this is why he set up these "Minority of One" organizations.

TI: But going back where Edison Uno's thinking was. He was thinking block grants but didn't really have the specifics...

HM: No, no.

TI: ...or details of sort of backing that up into a overall plan.

HM: No.

TI: And so, he then saw yours which had a lot of the information, the details, supporting the reparations or redress. So he was favorable to that although he perhaps disagreed with the individual versus block grants.

HM: Versus block grants, yeah.

TI: So, keep --

HM: No, he didn't go into things like why do we want to do this, what's the objective. Since I came from a system engineering and engineering background, to me these were requirements of that essential program that we were going to follow through on. And I needed to know in my own way and fashion why are we doing this, and what are the objectives that we want to meet and achieve, and so forth, and what are the constraints involving this process. So mine was a little bit different from Edison's in the way we would construct a project or program, completely different -- I'm looking at it from an engineering and limitation and constraint basis, and how much money can we generate to do these kinda things, and how much support do we need and all this. So that was part of my definition process. And Edison's case, he wanted to do this broad program, but when you started asking specifics, then he said, "Well, we'll have to come to that later." This is the way he responded.

TI: Well what attempt, or what attempt was made to integrate the two parties together, in working together at this point?

HM: Oh, I invited him to join us. And I said to him, well, if you feel comfortable with the things that we're presenting, why don't you take the parts that you feel kindly to and make the presentation to your groups. But that block grant thing was really the thing that caused him not to go along with everything because everything was based on individual constitutional rights. And it was not to his best interest if he was going to use the block grant method. Now the national organization, if they were having to -- forced up against the wall and having to do reparations, they would rather do the block grant and they wanted to control the entire financial package. And that was the last thing I wanted them to do because their management of financial funds, endowment funds is their reputation and their past history is zilch. They destroy endowment funds. And they take away management funds and all this kind of stuff and they leave it with practically nothing. And I knew the history of it because I asked Tomio, as the treasurer, "What the heck happened to these funds? How come we can't tap these things for things like the redress process?" And he investigated and found out they were being driveled to death because of poor management. So you know if they did they did the block grant thing, I was gonna raise -- I was gonna completely oppose that situation. And I tried to explain this to Edison and it wouldn't get past him because he was involved with the Kimochi Program in San Francisco, which is a very honorable program, a very well-run program. And he felt that those kind of organizations would be able to do much more for the community than if we obtained funds individually. I opposed that issue because I wanted the individual to make up his mind on how he wanted to distribute those funds, be it Keiro nursing home or other activities, or the church or whatever he felt comfortable with. So these were philosophical differences. But Edison was guest at my house a couple of times and I was trying to brainwash him during those visits because he was a captive audience to me. But it took a long while before I got all these differences of opinion --

TI: But in those two years where Edison was pursuing more of the block grant, were the two organizations or the two efforts viewed as competing efforts?

HM: No, no, no, because we were presenting what they referred to as the Seattle Plan, as one integrated plan structure for the national organization to pursue, and they adopted it in 1976 in Sacramento. And they adopted the whole package. That's the one that Ben Nakagawa presented at Sacramento and he beat down all the opposition. [Laughs]

TI: And when was that?

HM: This was August of 1976.

TI: Okay, so that's a little bit later.

<End Segment 29> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.