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EK: So what would you say were kind of the biggest successes and biggest challenges of the office?

AZ: Well, to go back to the impact, after learning more about it, then as other things happened, September 11th, or other events, it would make you think, "Oh, here we go again." And you would even, I would see news pundits also bringing up the Japanese American internment as other issues would come about and saying, "Are we not going to learn from our past mistakes?" So that was a big impact to me about just sort of remembering the past and how could this awful thing have happened, and how could we possibly even start heading that way again?

EK: I'm curious, do you talk to your kids about that?

AZ: I have one, I talked to him about that, and how we judge people. I guess, even, to us, September 11th doesn't seem like that long ago. I have a fourteen year old, it was way before he was born. But I did tell him about the program, and as Jewish people, we also think about the Holocaust and what happened there, and then what's happening in current politics, sort of makes you... I don't want to get too political. Just makes you think about how... so we discuss that at the dinner table, about how important it is to not let these types of things happen again. So I interrupted you, what was the next question?

EK: No, no, I was just going to say... are there any other people whose contributions you want to mention? I know that you know who else I'm interviewing with, but are there others that you just recall having had an impact that I might not have been set to interview?

AZ: Well, Kathleen Rosso was a colleague of mine that was at the program before I was in the program. There was an attorney, I think her name was Val O'Brien, and I remember she was our go-to if I had any questions that I wasn't sure what to do.

EK: Was Val before Tink?

AZ: Yeah.

EK: Were they there together, or was she....

AZ: Again, it was...

EK: Not clear.

AZ: It was a very impactful time in my life, but it was from 1990 to maybe 1995, and it was just for those maybe five, 1996, just that short period of time. And once we had gotten through a majority of the payments, then it was all to the sort of more legal issues which I wasn't involved with.

EK: What were your recollections just about the office and the people that worked there?

AZ: Well, I do remember, in the office we had a super amazing international crew. We had people from probably dozens of countries. I remember coming there as a, I think I was twenty-four years old and managing these people that were doctors in their country, or politicians, but because of the political climate, they had to leave. And some of those international issues, you know, you have people from India from different castes. And I remember telling this one, "It doesn't matter, I don't care what, you were there and what she was, we're all equal here, so you're going to have to talk to her." And just eating, our holiday parties would have cuisine from so many different countries, it was amazing, so that was great. I think a majority of the staff was contractors, and I don't know that we'll ever have another situation like that, because a lot of these folks weren't U.S. citizens, and I don't know that they'd be able to get hired as contractors today. But this was, again, 1990s, it was a different world.

EK: So now, are many of those contractors, did they have the opportunity to stay on with Justice after redress was over?

AZ: I don't believe most of them did. I think as the redress program was winding down, there wasn't a need for... now, some of them, I think, got absorbed into other projects, but I think most of them just got, as we were downsizing, there wasn't a need for twenty stage 2 analysts, twenty stage 1 analysts.

EK: So if you had to summarize kind of what your biggest takeaway from the whole experience was, or the impact on you would be, what would you say it would be?

AZ: Well, I was lucky to be at the right place at the right time to work on this historical event. If it weren't for what happened during World War II, there wouldn't have been a need for this. But the fact that the recognition of a wrong being done, and then being able to be part of that was an amazing experience. I've never had an office of people that were so interested and dedicated to what we were working on and what we were trying to accomplish. We worked hard, we played hard, and everyone, there was no slacker attitude, like, "I'm not into this, I don't care," everyone that you got was a person that was put through this. And we would often talk about, look what happened to this person, look what happened to that person. So it was a long time ago, but it was definitely very impactful. I do remember being out at some of the events and talking to some of the kids and saying, "Look, you should have your parents fill this form out for us, and they can get this." And they said, "But my parents don't trust the Department of Justice because it was the government, it was you people that put them away." And I never really experienced an individual telling me that, but it was more of a secondhand, from, "This is why parents aren't doing it."

EK: Is there anything else you want to add about anything related to redress?

AZ: After all these years, I still have a group of friends that I work with that we are still in touch with, and we have dinners once or twice a year, we'll all get together and have dinner. Now we talk about, instead of what we're doing, we all talk about what our kids are doing.

EK: Thank you.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.