<Begin Segment 23>

TI: Mas, next I want to do is talk a little about an organization that you belong to, the Nisei Veterans Committee, a group that at one point you were Commander. [Interruption] Before we get into your participation, can you just tell me a little about the Nisei Vets and the organization?

FF: Okay, well, I, I don't consider myself a real authority on the Nisei Vets, but they began right after all the guys came home from the service. I think in 1946, they had, they already had the nucleus of the organization. And they've been in existence for how many years now? Forty-some years anyway... no, fifty years, right? Tthey just had a fiftieth anniversary. And so, and... well, they take great pride in the fact that, really in fifty-some years they've never had the same Commander. But it was set up as a non-political organization, a purely fraternal organization. And so they shy away from political endorsements of any kind.

TI: One of the things that was of interest to me, is when I talk to veterans in other communities up and down the West Coast, generally they have joined existing veterans' organizations like the American Legion or VFW. And it almost sounds like the Nisei Vets Committee is unique in that this was a veterans' organization -- again, you said fraternal -- that was started on its own rather than having the veterans join the existing veterans' organizations in Seattle.

FF: Yeah. I think I, I think it at some point probably crossed their minds really to affiliate with some of these nationally franchised veterans' organizations. But I think some of the original founders of the Veterans' Organization, Nisei Veterans, had some earlier bad experiences with the American Legion or the VFW. I know one fellow in particular was going to join one of these organizations and was turned down just simply because he was Japanese. It's very odd really, that after what they had been through... when he was applying for membership from a hospital in which he was recuperating, they turned him down.

EG: There was also the role of the Legion and the VFW in California in time of internment, too, which I would think would turn the Japanese Americans off.

FF: Yeah. But, I think very wisely, these, the Nikkei at least in California, I guess they've taken the, "If you can't whip 'em, join 'em" philosophy. They're part of, they're very strong in the VFW down there. I attended one of their meetings, and boy, I tell you, the officials, the top officials of VFW from the national through the state were there at this Nisei VFW reunion. And I think that's one of the things really, probably most Japanese Americans, the younger ones don't think about is... one time, as you've mentioned, the VFW and the American Legion were tremendous political enemies of the Japanese Americans. As a matter of fact, they probably tipped the balance when, when evacuation came around. I mean, they were four square behind it. So it was, no way, it wasn't gonna happen. But as a result of, the Nisei now being members of the VFW and the American Legion, gosh, you contrast the situation prewar in 19... I think in 1984, both the American Legion and the VFW had resolutions which supported redress. They didn't support redress itself, but they condemned the condition which really brought about redress. And with that, you had really these two powerful political forces assuring you that they weren't going to interfere with the redress process. And boy, I tell you, that was really a... the JACL had to breathe a big sigh of relief, because they could have been, they could have turned that over in a second.

TI: In this non-opposition or support that these organizations did, you attribute to the, the sort of... I'm not sure about the right word, but the Japanese Americans joining these organizations after the war and...

FF: Yeah. I think that act in itself was really not as, not as meaningful as, as these organizations becoming aware that, there were Japanese Americans that contributed substantially to the war effort and that they deserved equal recognition.

<End Segment 23> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.