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EK: So were you there when they did the first check ceremonies?

AZ: I was.

EK: Could you talk a little bit about what those were like and your involvement in them?

AZ: It was neat being part of such a high profile... I mean, we were in the news all the time. So an anecdote about it, I know in the beginning there were actuarials that were guessing how many checks would come out and what ages of the people. And as we were approaching the deadline, and I wish I could remember if it was twenty or twenty-five thousand, but whatever it was, we did it by age, because we wanted to make sure that the oldest folks got paid first. Because it was sad, but we would get people that would send in documentation, and then I'd follow up and find out that they had passed away. So we wanted to make sure that those folks, the oldest ones would get paid first. And my memory was, when we first started, we thought, okay, we got the first twenty thousand or twenty-five thousand, and the date of birth would be 1924. Anyone born after 1924 will have to wait until the next year. And then another week would go by, and now it's 1923, because we've gotten so many more processed. And I think it just kept... and the year might not be right, but as the deadline came and we were getting so much, and we were working fifteen, twenty hours a day trying to get everything that we had processed when the final cutoff had to go to Treasury. And we'd come running, "Oh, I got a guy from 1905, get this one in there quick." And I just remember that the date just kept going and going and going, and we were just working so hard to make sure that at the end, that we were just looking through 'em to find anyone who was elderly, pretty old, to make sure that they got in there in time to make the first payment.

EK: Right, because I recall there were a lot more people that were in that age range than was expected. In other words, a lot of them were surviving until...

AZ: I think they lived a lot longer than the actuarials had expected.

EK: Exactly, exactly. So, actually, that brings to mind, so the ceremonial check presentations happened for that first round of payments, and my recollection is it happened in D.C., but it also happened in other areas of the country. Were you a part of, didn't they have a West Coast one?

AZ: I'm not... I don't know that they didn't, but I wasn't aware of it. They might have had a ceremony, but the one that I do remember was the first one, and I can't remember, 1992.

EK: Can you describe that that was like?

AZ: Well, people were coming in from all over the country, and I remember going to the airport in my little car and picking up people. And there was a gentleman, I think he might have been like a hundred and some years, a hundred and three years old, he came, he came with his son who was only in his seventies. And I think he might have been a reverend and he spoke at the event. And there's pictures, there were pictures in the newspaper, and I was just honored to be part of this event, it was an amazing event. And even though I was sitting in the last row, it was just great to be part of it. I remember it was in the Justice, I think it was in the main Justice building, so you have to have an ID to get in there. So I got to stand out in front, and as people come in, I can escort them in. People needed, like handicap access, I could take them through the routes that did not involve stairs or in an elevator. So it was a pretty amazing event. And then seeing it in the paper... of course, right afterwards, we got a lot of hate mail. Not a lot, but we got some awful mail.

EK: Because people weren't supportive of the program?

AZ: Yeah. We didn't process them. [Laughs]

EK: So for the people that didn't receive payment at these ceremonies, can you talk a little bit about, there's a check, there's a letter of apology, so how was that, were you involved with that?

AZ: Yeah. So we had, a formal letter of apology would go out, and we would, we had this big computer list that was on the old dot matrix printer with the little holes in the side. I think we sent these lists on these big reels of data to Treasury, and I think they cut all the checks. And then the checks would come to us, we would... you'd think I'd remember it better, but I believe we put the checks in with the formal letter of apology and had all these labels. And I believe that we mailed them out through the DOJ mail.

EK: I have a vague recollection of having, like, envelope stuffing parties where we did the letters and the checks and we all just, I remember batching them and sending them out.

AZ: And just to tell a, to me, an anecdote, we had, you had one year to cash the check, and some people never got around to cashing the check. I mean, I get it in some cases, it was elderly folks that just didn't have a lot available, but again, it was 1993, you couldn't take a picture of the check with your phone and get it deposited that way, you had to go to the bank. And we had some people that lost it, I remember one guy that called and he had had it with some other papers, and then he was grilling, and he took the newspapers to start the grill and the check went in there. And he didn't realize it until it was too late to get it back, so we ended up cutting checks again, but that was if you lost it or never cashed it.

EK: Well, I spoke to at least one person who said they didn't cash it because they wanted to symbolically keep the letter and the check. I think they framed it rather than cashing it.

AZ: Yeah, and we had a lot of requests to say, "Look I don't want the money. It's not about the money to me, can you just send it to the cancer society, or send it to some other charity in my name?" and we couldn't. We could just send it directly to the person and then they could do that.

EK: Were you involved with any of the archival searching? Going to the archives, digging around for information?

AZ: No.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.