Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Henry Miyatake Interview VI
Narrator: Henry Miyatake
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Location: Seattle, Washington
Date: October 28, 1999
Densho ID: denshovh-mhenry-06-0001

<Begin Segment 1>

Tom Ikeda: Today is October 28, 1999. We're at the Densho studios. This is the sixth interview that we're starting. And Henry, the last interview we ended up in 1976. And we had talked a little bit about the 1976 JACL Convention and how they had adopted the Seattle Plan. And they had formed a National Committee for Reparations at this convention. So we'll talk about that. And then we, you then talked about the rescission of E.O. 9066. So that's where we are. But let's go back to the national convention, 1976. They formed this National Committee for Reparations. And you were a member of this national committee. Can you tell me what happened with this committee and what you guys did after this convention?

Henry M.: Well, they appointed two people for the co-chairmanship of the National Redress Committee. One of them was Mike Honda, who is now assemblyman for the California legislature. And the problem was that the other guy didn't want to do anything. This was a facade that they put up to try to generate the feeling that they're gonna carry through with redress. But Mike and this other guy didn't get along very well and they were at opposing points of view. And...

TI: Well, I think it's in public records, so why don't you go ahead and mention this other person, so we hear...?

HM: [Laughs] I think I better not, just for the sake of his comfort. But, anyway, Mike was quite ambitious about carrying through on this program. And he was trying to get a coalition of inputs from different org -- different individuals that were appointed by their, their districts to represent the committee. Mike used to come up to Seattle, and we used to have long discussions about why we needed to do this, and what was the background of it, and all this kind of stuff. I was trying to orient him on the history of the whole redress process. He was trying to do his part. And one of the things that he was trying to do was trying to get Congressman Mineta to follow through with his commitment that he made to us back in September of 1975, when he was up here. And we collared him on his requirements for going through with the bill for redress. And so he became our liaison with Mineta's office in San Jose. And he was located in that general area also. So consequently, he indicated to the administrative aide that was covering the thing for Mineta to at least try to help us in terms of what we can do to implement this process through Mineta's office.

TI: Because your hope at this point was that Mineta would sponsor a bill for redress? Was that...?

HM: Yes.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 1999 Densho. All Rights Reserved.