<Begin Segment 35>

HM: And the Domestic Affairs Office in the White House came back and says, "What do you propose to be in this document that would revoke EO 9066?" And I -- in the midst of my Boeing work I, in the one afternoon I drafted a document --

TI: And that was the precursor to the American Promise?

HM: Yeah, but see we lost control of it because the JACL, the Washington D.C. representative got wind of it. What Ford had done was he asked the Domestic Affairs Office what day this revocation should take place? And his two dates that he mentioned was the anniversary date of the first E.O. 9066, 1942 date.

TI: Which would be February 19th.

HM: And the other date was December 7th.

TI: The bombing of Pearl Harbor.

HM: Yeah. So this woman calls me up at Boeing and I said, "No, you can't consider December 7th. It has to be February 19th." And I was very emphatic. And she couldn't understand why I was so emphatic. And I says, "Hey, these are two different issues. This is the bombing of Pearl Harbor by the Japanese Imperial Forces, and we're American citizens and this is the act that President Roosevelt did to us." And she finally consented. But then she said that they were looking at the draft that we prepared for them and I sent it by fax, and I don't even know where I kept my original copy. But she said, "We're thinking about making some revisions to it." And then she said, "We'll have to have it approved by other people." And I didn't know -- I didn't realize at that time that they were in contact with the Washington D.C. office of JACL. Anyway, that's where they contacted. And then they said all the arrangements are going to be made through that organization because that's who was affected. Well, this is one of the deals where in order for the Washington D.C. office to keep its reputation, there was supposed to be notification to all the key members of the participants in this area. So the night before, this was February 18th, there's a telephone message on my log when I went home and it says that I'm supposed to take the airplane to DC to be at this ten o'clock presentation by Gerald Ford. And here it's nine o'clock at night, and I wasn't about to take the red-eye.

TI: Do you think that was withheld on purpose?

HM: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

TI: That there's no way you could make it?

HM: Because two days earlier, Evans' office had an invitation for both Dolliver and Governor Evans. And so Evans gave his invitation to Mitch Matsudaira. But Mitch thought that we were being given the same invitation also so he just didn't even bother to notify us.

TI: So at the actual event, February 19, 1976, as Gerald Ford signed it, it was with JACL people there.

HM: Yeah, And Ed Yamamoto, who was the "Reppa Camp (Advocate)," he was the Northwest Director for the reparation movement, he was another block grant guy, he was sitting in his wheelchair and with the rest of 'em, and Mitch Matsudaira got pushed to the back. And Mineta and those guys were all in the back of Gerald Ford. So it was kind of an interesting situation. But that was one situation where if you could plan these things and know the connections, and know how to get to these people, you can get some very interesting things done. And --

TI: Well, how did you feel about not getting credit for the work that you did?

HM: Well, I thought, at least we did it. It was a situation where nobody gave us support. National JACL didn't give us support. In fact Roger Daniels keeps maintaining that it was Hiram Fong, the senator from Hawaii that did this. Well Hiram Fong didn't do anything but write a letter of endorsement for that action. He had nothing to do with it. But anyway this is what Roger Daniels says. And in fact that's what came out in the LA, UCLA meeting. He came up and said it was due to Hiram Fong, and I questioned his information. But anyway, that's the way they write history and if you don't... the whole pathway that we generated was kind of an interesting pathway. Well like Ruth Woo she's very modest about the things that she does, and she was very instrumental in some of these activities, very, very modest.

<End Segment 35> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.