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LH: Well, I'm gonna, again we're gonna skip ahead a little bit in terms of time. But just talking a little about when the commission hearings came to Los Angeles, how you sort of got organized, how NCRR helped organize those hearings, and getting people to the hearings as well. I mean, what were some of the things that you had to undertake?

BN: As a person, activist, I realized that you had to create an environment to get anything done in the majority community. Because we were such a small community, we had to create an environment where the majority community is gonna get on board. And how're we gonna do that? Well, the commission hearings was a vehicle. We felt that that's one way we can get education out to the majority community. And not only majority community, to our community, so they can understand that, "Hey, what you went through isn't because -- it wasn't your fault, it was the United States government, because of their racist policy that put you in there." And when we had the, helped the testifiers, you ought to hear the -- I mean, the testimony was too... you can't stay in the auditorium and listen to testimony, I mean, it was too heavy, you had to go out and come back in, get fresh air and come back in. There was one incident. I was in charge of the Japanese-speaking group that went up to the... and gave testimony to the commissioners. And many of them were Japanese-speaking and my father-in-law, he was one of the group, but he was a Nisei. And he's, by that -- he was about eighty-seven or something. And he was a Nisei, not an Issei. And we had elderly, eighty-something lady speaking in Japanese. When we went up there, this Dan Lungren, he was a vice-chair of the commission, came up and says, "Okay, we have your testimony, it's not necessary for you to speak Japanese."

LH: The translations of the testimony.

BN: Right. So they had the testimony translated into English, so he was, he said it was not necessary. And I got pissed. And so I stood up and I said, "You told these people to shut up forty years ago, no way they gonna shut up now." If I didn't say that, my father-in-law probably kick my butt when I get home. [Laughs] But anyway, Marutani interceded and he talked to Dan Lungren and they had 'em speaking in Japanese, so that was good. My father-in-law was happy. In fact, he came up and says, "You don't have to worry, I speak English." So he read his testimony in English, but it was very... and incidents like that brought out within the community understanding between Issei, Nisei, Sansei. That was the beauty of the hearing itself. And that's how I think it created an environment where the community was for redress and if you were a community leader, you better get on board, otherwise you're gonna be ostracized. Like same with Hayakawa, when he spoke at the testimony and he gave his testimony, he was jeered and people knew that, leaders knew that. And then certainly, you know, they gotta get on board, if they don't get on board, the community's gonna leave them behind, because they were moving, you know. So the hearing was good in that sense, one, it was educational for the majority population, and two, it galvanized the community to work for redress.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.