<Begin Segment 32>

HM: Well, we had a couple of things going for us because we had -- Gerald Ford was President at that time on the Biennial function for the country, the 1976, 19... well, 1776 to (1976) Biennial situation.

TI: Right the 1776 to 1976, right.

HM: We had him write the "American Promise" which had the recision function for E.O. 9066.

TI: That happened earlier that year on February 19, 1976.

HM: Yes. And so anyway, I guess Dave Ushio felt kind of guilty about the fact that we did all the work and they got all the credits for it. So on the program that they had for that Sacramento convention, the program, main program sheet, had the "American Promise" right on the front cover. They didn't talk about who did it, but it was on the front cover. So when we went to that convention, Mike Masaoka was kinda interested in how we did that. And so that was in the two day session that we had with him. So I explained to him what avenues of approach we took and he said -- I told him that since Sugiyama and Ushio wouldn't give us any support, we did it ourselves. And he was kinda surprised. But that kind of changed his attitude about these crazy guys from Seattle. So he had a little bit more respect than he had prior to that.

TI: Because then at that --

HM: He didn't know where we were coming from. He didn't know how powerful we were. The fact that we could get to Governor Evans and get to Nelson Rockefeller and get to Gerald Ford, and be able to do this.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.