<Begin Segment 9>

TI: Coming back again to the three days of the conference, what were some things, as you were listening to people, that really made you feel proud to be part of the redress movement?

RT: Well, what really made me feel proud of being in the redress movement was that all these people -- they didn't just come to Washington, D.C. once. They came over, and over, and over again. There was one little thing that I was very disturbed about. But where this one guy -- if I was feeling better, well, I'd have probably knocked him on his butt. But when I talked about something that had happened, he more or less told us, came out and said we were lying. And we know what we did. So the way I felt was, "Who in the hell does he think he is, anyway?" And I think Judy knows about it because she came over and she sat down next to me real quick because I think she felt that I was getting very angry. And this really disturbs me. Because, here's a guy that belongs to a big organization -- and he's trying to build himself up as somebody that's a big shot. There shouldn't be such a thing as a big shot in an organization like that. The little man works as hard as the guy up on top. The guy up on top gives more orders, but who in the hell's going to do that order? It's that little man down below. Now, this is just like, just like in the army. We never -- you never see a sergeant belittling anybody below him, not in our outfit. Because the sergeant knew when he gives an order, these are the guys who he's going to have to give the order to. And they might -- and if they're mad at him, they're liable to tell him, "Why don't you go do it yourself?" I think, I've always felt that anytime... well, I ran a company -- and I used to have, I used to have close to seventy people working for me. And I never would go out there and tell a person that's workin' for me, "Hey, what the hell's the matter? How come this is so sloppy?" And the reason why I would not treat a person like that is I don't want to be treated that way, myself. So why -- what gives me the right to treat 'em like that? So if I saw some work that was pretty lousy or something like that, I never talked to him, I would talk to the foreman of that section. And I'd say, "You know, I think this should be done a little bit better. Don't chew him out, but show him. You do it -- you show him." And I think this is the way you should handle people because otherwise, if you always try to tell a guy, "All right, dig it a little deeper," one of these days when you tell him, "Dig it a little deeper," he's gonna give you the damn shovel, he'll tell you, "Dig it yourself."

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 1997 Densho. All Rights Reserved.