<Begin Segment 6>

gky: You know, you said that we're not in the same time that we were fifty years ago. Fifty years ago, can you sort of project yourself back, and did you think about having your civil rights violated then? Or did you feel that your civil rights were violated?

KA: You know, like I said, I didn't know enough about the Constitution, you know. All I was mad about is the fact that the Issei parent are saying to us, "You're an American citizen and you're in here, you know, just like we are." And that -- and what they were saying was true, and that really hurt. But I didn't, I wasn't smart enough to know that my civil rights were violated. In fact, I didn't think about this phase of it until I happened to be helping the museum [Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles] during, I mean, during Nisei Week, many years ago. We had a display of the Manzanar diorama and a hakujin came in, you know. And I wanted to explain about the camp, and that's when it really hit me. You know, I lost my freedom. And it didn't occur to me, I didn't want to raise any question or anything else, it just suddenly hit me then, I just choked up as I spoke to these people. I said, "You know, during that time, we were locked up and we lost our freedom, and it really hurt." And it hit me then for the first time that boy, I mean, you know, you don't know what it is to feel that. I mean, when you lose your freedom by being locked up for no other reason than being a Japanese, it really hurt. It's not the fact that I was tied in chains, or anything else. It's just the fact that you were in an enclosure, and you could move within there, but you couldn't move out. And so a lot of these people say about the civil rights and everything else, and I know that they talk about the resisters and everything else; boy, they were awfully smart compared to I was, you know. Because I didn't think about those kind of things.

And the other thing is, when they were talking about the redress, I wasn't a gung ho person for redress, as such, you know. I figured, let the thing lie and just forget about it. But then this lawyer that was working, I was working with, one day he said to me, "You know, apology yes, but no compensation." And he is of German descent. So that really -- you know, until then I never thought about it, then suddenly this guy tells me this. So, I said, "Bill, let's face it. If it was you, you wouldn't be settling for $20,000, it'd be in the millions, so don't give me that bull." And he was shocked because he didn't think I would say this. But, you know, little things like that sort of made me realize that this violation of our civil rights, you know. That's why I do work on this thing, because I kind of feel that people should know. I mean, you don't realize these things until, I hate to say somebody points it at you, but then somebody starts saying that your rights were never violated. If they start saying that, I say, "Hell, no, we were violated," you know.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2000 Bridge Media and Densho. All Rights Reserved.