Densho Digital Archive - Roger Daniels Interview (denshovh-droger-02-0016)

<Begin Segment 16>

Q: Why has it taken forty years for the Japanese Americans to bring this up about redress?

RD: Forty years, of course, is a long time for individuals, but historically speaking, forty years isn't a very long time at all. And although one doesn't want to just hand out bouquets, I think that we do have to remember that there are very few governments that would, after forty years, or even after four hundred years, would willingly reexamine and at least consider making formal apology for actions. Forty years is just about the length of time that it takes to get perspective on certain kinds of events. In addition, I think this was a very traumatic event for the Japanese American population, particularly for the Nisei. And that for large numbers of them, they just didn't want to hear any more about it. They wanted to close it up, to not talk about it and certainly as late as the early '60s, it was very difficult to get people to talk. Not everybody, but most people didn't want to talk. Community activists in the early '60s, people like Edison Uno, who tried to make some of these things fly, just got absolutely nowhere for a while. Then things began to change Within the community people were willing, for instance, as they had not been willing after the war, to try for a pardon for Iva Toguri, the so-called Tokyo Rose. I think that was an important kind of milestone. This was something that the community scapegoated her a lot when her trial came up after the war, but by the early '70s, large numbers of people in the community are willing to do this. Then of course, the whole movement for redress came and I also think that although you can' t make an equation out of this, but the Sansei generation, or some of them, by their probing, by their questioning, by their sometimes less than sympathetic asking, "Well, why didn't you resist? Why didn't you do more?" forced their parents, or some of them, to come to grips with these questions and to begin to do something about them. In addition, of course, the community felt a lot safer. It was established, it had political clout to a degree. There were, after all, in 1980, for example, when redress went through, 3 percent of the United States Senate was Japanese American. There were, there were three votes there; there were others in the House. This was, this was important. They'd achieved certain economic and social status. They could feel that they were, they had arrived. They were hailed as a "model minority," whatever that meant. This was the kind of self-confidence necessary, but to have tried to start this in the '50s or the early '60s as some people did, was bound to frustration, it wasn't ready. I'm not at all sure that the government or the Caucasian population would have been ready to consider it either. From some of the letters we've seen and the Letters to the Editor column, we know that there are still some people who identify Japanese Americans and Pearl Harbor as if they were one and the same. But I think that's very definitely a minority view today. I certainly hope so. But I know it seems like a long time, especially to someone like you who hasn't even seen forty years, but historically speaking, forty years is not that long to have some kind of perspective.