<Begin Segment 7>

TI: That gives me good insights in what lobbying's all about. Let's now think about the last three days, you've been in lots of sessions where they've talked about the redress. People have talked about their roles, what they've done, sort of their strategies. I just wanted to ask you what you thought about the last three days and any thoughts have come from these three days?

RT: Well, I sat in a lot of the sessions. I've heard what people said they did and how they did it -- and why they did it. And to me, I felt real good inside because of the fact I was thinkin' about, "My God, just not too long ago, we couldn't even think about coming and asking for a bill to be passed." Now, you know, we... there was quite a few of us volunteered for the 442nd. We went over to Europe. And we were an outfit that took the worst beatings that could happen in World War II. You know, we never gave an inch, we didn't believe in it. And a lot of people would ask me, "How come you guys didn't believe in giving an inch?" I says, "All right, say it took two miles of turf, and you got pushed back two miles of turf, how many people do you lose while you're being pushed back?" Now, if you lost fifteen people to take that two miles, you're gonna -- the best you can do is lose another fifteen people to take it back. So you're gonna lose twice the amount of people that you should have. So if you're gonna lose that many people, why not just stay there and lose it? Why go through all that misery of having to run and hit the dirt and everything? Why not just stay there? And we always felt that we're not an outfit that's gonna go backwards. I've -- I actually shouldn't come out and say this -- but we were Japanese. When you really come down to it, we were Japanese Americans. And I always remember when I was a kid, that I was always told, "You are Japanese. You are the best. You never lose at anything you do." And I believe that this story wasn't just told to me. I think most of the Japanese families, the parents told their kids this. And we never used to get in trouble, because we were always taught that if you get in trouble -- and you get punished for it and everything -- it's shameful. So, can you imagine, we had, well -- 19,000 people went through our outfit. But you will not find one AWOL record in our outfit.

TI: That's impressive.

RT: This is something -- you never see something like this. And even when we were back in the States training... these Caucasians and whatnot, they couldn't understand it. Because the average height of our outfit was about five feet, four inches. There was some of 'em that didn't quite make the five feet mark. Yes?

JN: There's an effort to seek congressional Medals of Honor for some of the men who received the Distinguished Service Crosses. Do you think that might happen? And how do you think that might come about?

RT: Can I get back to that as soon as I talk about this? You go to a Caucasian outfit. Now, I'm 5'5." And in our outfit, I'm up towards the tall guys' end. If I was in a Caucasian outfit, I'd be down there in the short guys' end. But even at that... we went on a 28 mile forced hike. And we had to do it in eight hours. Do you know, we hold the record for doin' it in the least time of any other outfit? Not only that, we did not have anybody drop out. And like, a lot of people would say, "How in the hell can you go 28 miles like that, on a forced hike, and nobody drops out?" Because in order to do it, what you do is you double time for so much, and then you quick time for so much.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.