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-05-0034

<Begin Segment 34>

TI: Let's go back -- let's have you tell the story about the recision of E.O. 9066 because that's an interesting process that you went through, essentially used state connections to make it happen.

HM: Well, this is one example of where grassroots organizations, if they use the right connections and get the right people to support 'em can do something very effectively in a short period of time. And I have to give a lot of credit to Tom Koizumi and Ruth Woo and James Dolliver and people that helped us in this effort, Governor Evans, Nelson Rockefeller and even President Gerald Ford. And well, since Tom Koizumi was active in the political scene... when I came back from San Francisco in '74, I had a long discussion with Tom. And I said, "Hey, I have no hope of using JACL as an active board for getting E.O. 9066 revoked." And all the stuff that I researched at that law library indicated it's in the Federal Code. It was part of the Federal Code. And they were, the War Powers Act enabled the President of the United States to invoke this kind of power. And the thing wrong with E.O. 9066, it was a very innocuous document. It doesn't say that you're gonna put Japanese Americans into camps, it just says that they can make military security areas where they deem necessary, and then take proper security actions. This was the forerunner of the Internal Security Act, by the way, if you want to go back to real congressional history. But I told Tom, we should at least revoke this darn thing. This was the forerunner, precursor of Public Law 503 that set up the legislative action to throw us into camps. If we can't get rid of this thing, then anything that we do wouldn't have much meaning. Well, Tom said, "Well we gotta do this other thing about the Asian engineer thing." And I said, I told him, "Hell, this is uppermost priority and we gotta get this thing done." And I said hey, you know all the political realms in this thing, and at that time Mitch Matsudaira was the Asian American Affairs Director. And I said, you know Mitch and Mitch has been involved with you on this EEO process, and in fact Mitch lost his job because he was involved with EEO thing, by the way. And that's why he became the director at Olympia. So I said, "Hey, let's use all our contacts and let's make this thing work." Well, Tom knew Phil Hayasaka, who was the equal opportunity person for the City of Seattle. And Phil was, going back to high school, we were bumping each other for candidacy for class officer, and I had a very high respect for Phil from way back. And I knew he could do a lotta things.

TI: So he was kind of like a rival of yours?

HM: Yeah. [Laughs] But anyway, Tom said okay, "Let's line up all these people. Let's see if we can get support from these individuals. And let's see if we can go through the governor's office because Ruth is the Executive Secretary now in Olympia. She can pull a lot of strings for us."

TI: And you felt that the governor was a good choice because of his relationship with Nelson Rockefeller --

HM: Yeah, because --

TI: Who was, at that point he was Vice President of the United States.

HM: Yeah, in fact, he introduced Nelson Rockefeller at the National Republican Convention, I think. Anyway, so we had all this, and we made a flow chart of who is connected with whom, just like a dumb engineer does. And said, I told Tom, "Let's get Ruth to get us an appointment with somebody on Evans' staff. And let's explain the situation to him and let's see if he's gonna want to do anything." So that's what we pursued. He contacted Ruth, and Ruth talked with Phil Hayasaka and talked with Mitch Matsudaira and she talked to Governor Evans, and Governor Evans decided to put James Dolliver, his Chief of Staff on this thing, since Dolliver was an attorney. And so we met with him near the Seattle Center and Dolliver was so convinced that they had revoked E.O. 9066 that he said, "There's not a remote chance that this thing is still empowered." And I said no, this is the status of the thing, and it's in the Federal Code. And I gave him the Federal Code number. And he says, "I'm sure they have revoked it." So I said well, "In the event that it isn't revoked, would you follow up on this thing for us?" And he says, "Well, I'll do what I can." So he does his research and sure enough it isn't revoked. So a week later, a week and a half later he calls me up and he says, "Yeah, I think you're right. This has not been revoked." And so I said, I asked him what action he's gonna take and he says he'll bring it up with the governor. And so Evans gets informed about it and he says he wants Dolliver to go to Washington D.C. to see what the Department of Justice thinks about the thing, and maybe get into the Domestic Affairs Office. So that's what he did.

Evans authorized the trip for Dolliver and he went to Washington D.C., and went to the Department of Justice and they verified it, and it goes to the Domestic Affairs Office and then the Domestic Affairs Office is willing to help cooperate. [Laughs] And this is just by coincidence. And so when he came back from Washington he says, "Hey, if you want to do something about this thing, I think if Governor Evans is willing to take action, I think we could get something done." And he mentioned, well, there's some connections he could make within the White House. He didn't say who at that time. Anyway, he made three trips, and every trip he made he felt more convinced that it could be done. And so the connection was made with Nelson Rockefeller, and then Rockefeller -- from Dolliver to Evans to Rockefeller, and Rockefeller put it on Gerald Ford's desk.

<End Segment 34> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.