<Begin Segment 33>

LH: So how did you proceed after that?

MN: All the women took their turns and tell their stories, and it was, it was eye opening. And I just want to, again, I want to sink into the background. I want to disappear in a puff of smoke. They all kind of concluded what should they do. So Cherry says, okay. There is a vice president of the Seattle school board, his name is TJ Vassar, and he's willing to write a proposal and a resolution, and, to try and get redress for all of us, and I think... and they said, "Well, what's the process?" And she says, "Well, we have to make a presentation to the board. It'd be very impressive if we could get some officials to join us, but essentially we're going to have to count on you ladies to make a presentation in front of the board." And immediately, no, not me. I don't know how to talk. I don't want to talk in a public way. Everybody kind of said no, no, no. And then one lady said, "Wait a minute. We're not the ones who messed up. We're not the ones that hurt other people. Why should we be the one? They should be the ones to pay us. We shouldn't have to do anything." And this is all understandable and then one brave lady, May Namba, she says, "Well, if it needs to be done and I'll make a presentation, provided I'm not the only one. I don't want to be the only one," she says, "but I'll..." And we all kind of looked at her and said wow, that's brave. That's brave. So then several other women says I think that I might, and I'm saying wow, that's brave. It really wasn't until I heard their stories and their hurt, and I hear it now and they're so petrified about making the presentation, and they're willing to do it. And I thought, wow, wow. So they worked on their stories, and then we got a lot of letters. It was really easy to get letters of support by that time. It was a whole different atmosphere.

LH: Okay, what year would this have been?

MN: Oh, God. I got the -- '83. '83-'84. Yeah, that's right. We started '83 when I was president. That's how it came to me and '84 is when the first... April, I think, '84, when TJ Vassar put his proposal in and then we had a line up. The mayor came and spoke and the person who -- George Fleming who was -- wrote the one for the state redress, he came and spoke. And then we had a lawyer come and speak and then May Namba was the very first person to make a presentation and wow, I heard her freak out. I heard her petrified. I heard her going through all these gyrations of emotions, and that day of the actual presentation, she walked up there with just all the dignity and grace that she could muster up, and she just looked -- all the professional people came up and they were just glib and they were just great. They were comfortable looking. Well, she walked in there and to me, she was stunning. She was just stunning. Not recognize the same lady. [Laughs] And she made her presentation and then the next two ladies made their presentation, and then we had a high school kid, May Sasaki's daughter, said what it means to her as a Sansei young person. Why it's so important to her that these ladies get redress for their unfair dismissal from the Seattle schools. And it was very impressive.

And what we had planned is we're going to do this and wait two weeks for the next board meeting and then make another presentation when the board will make a decision. And so we waited that two weeks, but in that two weeks' time, it got a lot of publicity and the next two, the second presentation, the opposition showed up, Lillian Baker group. I forgot what they called their names. "Americans for a more accurate society" or something like that. And they said that the concentration never happened. The guard towers were really water towers. We were a safe place -- the regular kind of stuff that people give us every time, but they were rude. They were heckling and they were rude, and we were only supposed to be given three minutes, and they tried to take more of the time. Some people went up more than once. We just sat there gritting our teeth. We sat there gritting our teeth. Oh, God. I wanted to say something. I'm sure other people did too. They were obnoxious. And when they finally came to the time of the vote, we were all emotional again, and the vote was 4 yes, 2 no, and 1 abstention so that meant it passed. And so I was going, "Yeah, it passed," and yet I was so disappointed because I did a lot of lobbying of the board. That was my job. I did the lobbying of the board. I knew we had 4. I thought pretty sure we might get 5, and there was an outside chance that the 6th one might come with us so I said gee, 6 would be nice, but I was kind of -- that was an outside, but 5 was a good possibility. As it turned out one finked out on us as far as I'm concerned. We got the four so I am kind of in a emotional, you know, yeah, it passed. No. Too bad it's only four. I was going through the gyrations like this and this man sitting right next to me, he stands up and obviously so other people could hear, he says, "We should have lynched in Puyallup while we had the chance." And I have to admit, that's another time, I...

LH: That's quite a statement, quite timing too.

MN: It was devastating for me. When I tell the story to people, they say, "What did you do, Mako?" I didn't do nothin'. I just sat there. I couldn't move. I was frozen. And I kept saying, "breathe in, breathe out." [Laughs] That's all I could think was breathe in, breathe out. Meanwhile the board called a recess and everybody was filing out to the lobby area. I couldn't move. I just couldn't move. I want to get out of there and I couldn't move. And finally I started kind of melting and I kind of fumbled my way out to the lobby, and there I saw Mr. Koshi, Peter Koshi. He's a very, very short man and this very same guy who said this, he's a very tall man. So it was almost a comic look at them. This very short man and very tall man, and George Koshi is looking up at him saying, "We fought in the war, too. We earned our rights." He's yelling at this guy and this guy is saying, "If you don't like it here, go back to Japan," and they are yelling at each other. And somehow that scene just brought me back to reality. I figure, "Oh, okay. I can breathe now." I don't know why. I just looked at that and I felt like it's real now so then I went out and I congratulated Cherry and I hugged May Namba and I got back to reality.

And the next day we had a party at May Namba's house and we all brought potluck, and we all saw news clippings from the day before where it passed. And we all talked about how quiet we were, and should we have said something, and I think we did it right. Later on one of the board members said that was the most dignified, impressive, touching, moving presentation she's ever attended in all her years of working on the board so I feel proud of that. I do feel like any other group would have said something except us, and I'm not so sure that that's good or that's bad because it's so easy to get misinterpreted, but we felt at that time, we says that was dignified, that was right. We did it our way and we're proud of it. And I was talking to my son the other day and he was saying young people, Japanese Americans would not sit there quietly so maybe they're quote, "more American." [Laughs] That was our way and I think it's okay if you do it your way too, but I would love for people to hear what our way was and appreciate it for what it was. It wasn't cowardice. It wasn't mean. It was just our way and it deserves, it deserves a rightful place in doing things.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.