<Begin Segment 32>

MN: So all twenty-seven were let go and then the camp comes and we're all incarcerated. Now forty-one years later, we're in the middle of redress campaign, national redress is going on, California starts their redress for state workers, Washington starts, goes into -- so Washington is at the point where we get state redress and we go to city. We get city redress, but city redress and state redress was kind of done at California already. Nobody has gone and done any kind of request for redress from a school district, and so we decided, wow, lets... we have -- that article I just gave you. There was an article that says "Twenty-seven Jap girls quit school jobs," and we says, gee, I wonder what that's all about? We didn't know much about the story and we read that one article and Cherry Kinoshita in her doggedly way found out who all the girls were and then said, "Gee, do you think there is a possibility of going after redress from the Seattle schools?" I said, "Let's go for it."

So she called a meeting -- I happened to be JACL president that year that's the only reason why she talked to me -- and she brought together the women. And then she said, she talked to the women. It was really kind of a very polite, the women came together all dressed nicely, talking and chitchatting with each other. And then she laid out that we're going after state redress, and she told the background of this and she was wondering if this group of people would like to have us, JACL, support them in any action they might want to take against the Seattle schools. And then she asked me to talk about the possibility of how this might occur. And so, and I'm a product of the 60's. I said, "Yes. Let's go for it, man. The Seattle school district done us in," and I was pounding the table. And I was saying, "Yes. It's only right and our story has to be heard and people don't know these things happened to us. If they don't hear from us again, they're going to do it again to somebody else. It's our patriotic duty." I am just as probably pushing these ladies as much as Jimmy Sakamoto did to them forty-one years before. [Laughs] It was really... I am embarrassed to tell my part of this story 'cause my part's not very good, and then Cherry was real smart. After I sat down, she said, "Let's have a coffee break." [Laughs]

So we had a coffee break. She was really smart and then she had the women settle down back in their chairs and she says, "Well, do you have any stories that you recollect from those days?" And the women really start talking about oh, yes, I was hired by Seattle schools, and they were talking about factual things like which school, what the principal, you know, factual things, but... it did not take them long before they got to the gut stuff, and they were talking, one woman, it's really like it happened yesterday. She said she was called into the assistant superintendent's office, and as she was walking there, I could just see her mind. She didn't say this, but I could just see her mind thinking what does the superintendent want with me? Do you think it's something that she want to praise me of? I could just imagine what went on in her head, but she walks into the superintendent's office not knowing what he wanted, and he more or less tells her off saying, "You are a detriment to Seattle schools. There's going to be a meeting the next day by Jimmy Sakamoto, and I want you to be involved in telling all these women, making sure they quit their jobs, resign from their jobs," and she's horrified. She talked -- at that meeting, she talks a little bit about that -- but mostly she talked about going to the bathroom and going into the stall and crying. And she said she really tried hard to settle herself down because she had to get on the bus and go home, and she didn't want to sob all the way home so she just tried to take deep breaths. And she thinks she's in control so she walks out of the bathroom, and she starts bawling all over again.

I thought, "Oh, my goodness. This happened forty-one years ago and she is telling us this story, and she's crying, the rest of the women are crying, Oh God." I have to admit I started crying. And the rest of the women starting telling their stories and these wounds that were held in these woman for forty-one years is just really fresh, and then I start feeling like a really idiot. Here I am, "Let's go for it folks," acting like a jerk and not being sensitive to the wounds that still hurt today. And I did a complete turn around. I kind of said, "Don't talk anymore, don't tell people this story. [Laughs] They don't deserve to hear it anymore." I was feeling so squeamish. I was just completely abashed. I mean, I was stunned. I didn't know what to do. I was, it was a learning experience for me. I said oh, Mako, you can't jump in there like that. You've got to find out what's happening first.

<End Segment 32> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.