Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Bert Nakano Interview
Narrator: Bert Nakano
Interviewer: Larry Hashima
Location: University of California, Los Angeles
Date: September 13, 1997
Densho ID: denshovh-nbert-01-0006

<Begin Segment 6>

LH: So after the commission hearings, though, I mean, what did NCRR do? I mean, it seemed like after that...

BN: Oh, we had meetings, and before, we used to have maybe four or five people at the meeting or six people at a meeting, now we're getting fifteen, twenty people at a meeting. And they all wanted to voice their opinion about certain things and what the strategy should be and so forth, which was very good, that's what we wanted. We wanted input from the community. And we were getting an ear full. And they made sure that we're gonna toe the line that we have talked about. And I mean, when we had the Day of Remembrance program, when we had program like that, fifty people showed up, but after the hearing, 200, 300 people showing up for the program, so it was a big difference before the hearing and after the hearing. So the movement was there already, I mean, it's started and the environment was there, the leaders can talk within the environment. Without that environment, they were scared to open their mouth about redress because they are afraid of people criticizing them. But with the kind of environment that we created and the hearings created, they felt comfortable working in the redress movement.

LH: So again, how did they keep that momentum going then, sort of 1984, 1985, right after 1983 the hearings are over, the report comes out -- how does NCRR keep that momentum going until...

BN: Well, it was difficult, but we always had -- you know, people, the coram nobis thing came out, the class-action suit. There was a lot of information coming out of the, from these two law cases. Good information we can use. We in NCRR recognize the strength of JACL and we wanted to unite the community, and work together as one united community, because we were too small of a community, we have to be united. If not, they're gonna pick us apart. So any criticism leveled at us we never spoke in public. In private, oh yeah, oh yeah, it was different. But in public we never publicized our opposition to whatever. We just put our views through and that was it.

So it's the kind of a situation where the hearings and the momentum kept building and building, we had to create a lot of things. We had to have press conference, we had to have the Day of Remembrance program become bigger and bigger, and we had speakers from various groups. We in fact had speakers from the, I think the Four Corners, they had the Indian, the big mountain struggle, you know, Four Corners, and they were trying to move the Indians from that area and they called it relocation, like they called us. And we backed them and they came to the Day of Remembrance program, spoke about their struggle. We had chiefs there speaking about, we had a movie -- I don't know, it was Broken Arrow or something -- and we tried to educate people that these things are happening. It happened to you, it's happening now. We have to work together to create an environment where we can pass legislation so that our congresspeople will be able to, be able to vote for it. If not, they're not gonna do anything without that kind of environment. It's the same with the African American movement, the Civil Rights movement. President Kennedy wouldn't have signed the Civil Rights Bill if it wasn't for the African American people mobilizing and coming out, thousands, and sacrifices by the young folks. And, you know, these African American leaders like Martin Luther King, Malcolm X wouldn't have existed if it wasn't for the movement of the African American people themselves. It's the same thing with redress movement. The leaders wouldn't be leading us if it wasn't for the environment created by the community itself.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.