<Begin Segment 8>

TI: As you talk about this story, it reminds me -- what I'm curious about is -- did this same spirit, did you see any of the same spirit during the redress movement? Or were you able to bring some of the same spirit? When you think of the people you worked with, and what you did? Sometimes it looked like the insurmountable obstacles, and not wanting to give an inch and as you made gains -- did that come into play? Did you see that?

RT: Well see, yes I did. Because when we came it was first time that they had asked the veterans to come and lobby. And so all of us veterans stuck together, we divided up, went to see all the congressmen. And it's like -- well, a good example is when we came up against this grumpy old congressman and the other guys -- two guys walked out. And when I finally walked out there, what they said to me was, "What the hell was you doing in there? We were gonna get together and go back and -- " we use the phrase, "bust 'em up." So I just said, "Well, I don't think that we have to do that." And I told them what I had done and what I had told the man. And I says when I talked about his injuries and I know that he wakes up every morning with back pains and everything, but he still comes and puts his time in as a congressman and everything. And I had to take my hat off for him and thank him. I says, "You know, I saw his eyes get watery." So I says, "I don't think he's going to be real mean to us anymore." I didn't know -- I didn't think we'd win him over completely to our side.

TI: That's part of the spirit -- you were in that room...

RT: Yeah.

TI: You didn't want to give up, give up an inch. You were there and you realized you were that far, so go ahead and keep fighting...

RT: Yeah.

TI: Since you were there.

RT: I was quite amazed, because instead of -- after we go to see one guy like this -- going to have a cup of coffee and saying, "Well, what the hell did we do wrong?" or anything like that, they're ready to go to the next man. You know, everybody -- these guys, there was no such thing as, "Well, why don't we take a break?" And I know at the end there, we sort of kidded each other. We said, "Hot damn, this is like a forced march in the army, or trying to make an attack," or something like that. And everybody would say, they'd say, "Oh yeah, but nobody's shootin' at us." So you see, everybody was fightin' like hell and we wanted to see as many of them guys, talk to as many of them as we can, to make 'em change their minds. And we felt that we didn't want to stay there long after we got through talkin' to 'em. Because then you got 'em looking at you. And they see that you're Japanese. You're Oriental. So we felt the best way to do that is get through talking with them and leave. This way, they've just had... some veterans come in and talk to them. And we felt that that was a better way of leaving and letting it sink into their minds.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.