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Redress denials is a whole second chapter. The beginning, I call it the honeymoon period with the ORA, getting to know one another, getting the first redress checks out to the community, the first check ceremony, and the one in Los Angeles also, oh my gosh, yes. That the ORA brought it to the cities, it was terrific because more and more people got to participate in that, so that was terrific. And in Los Angeles, Sumi Seki, one of our staunch members, made fresh floral leis for everybody involved, and I remember James Turner, the Assistant AG of Civil Rights, they all had to wear leis because that's how we roll. [Laughs] And that the ten approximately eldest in Los Angeles were able to get the check from the ORA directly. It was a little unfortunate that the rest of the checks had to just be mailed out, but I do have to say, and I don't know, I hope I don't get anybody in trouble, I think it's too late. But Bob actually arranged for my parents' check to be sent directly to me, so I could bring it down to San Diego to give to them personally, and that was special, so I do appreciate that. Thanks, Bob. [Laughs]

And so the '90s decade, that was a horse of a different color because we were fighting now. We were in really kind of proactive mode because after the first checks were delivered, we found out very, very quickly, which is... chapter 11 of the NCRR book, if you don't want to read everything in the book, go to chapter 11. Do you have a copy of this book? I have one as a gift to you, for Emi for coming to San Diego to tape this interview. And chapter 11 is the one that I worked the hardest on, because it is about the redress denials. And it may be the chapter that Bob's article is in, and working with the ORA, and it ends with the statistics of how many checks were issued by the ORA, the Japanese Latin Americans, all the different categories that we worked with on denials, and unknowns, et cetera. So that, sent to the community members by the ORA, is an important document for us, too.

We soon found out that people were not, were being denied redress. They got the official letter from the ORA about the appeals process, lot of phone calling about the appeals process, helping people in our community to not give up, not quit, and about the redress. So David Monkawa, an NCRR person, and Jan Yen, one of the officers, and others, myself included, worked on creating files for all the phone calls we got. We received dozens and dozens and dozens of people who were calling us about being denied. After we made these simple forms of categorizing who was being denied redress, it became pretty clear after a short time what the categories were. And we launched a campaign for each of the categories. And we made trips to Washington, D.C., for example in '93, '94, probably every year, or almost every year of the '90s, to meet with Department of Justice leadership like Assistant Attorney General James Turner, was at one of the first meetings. Because the ORA, because of the attorneys at Justice, would say, "Well, we can do no more, this is about as far as we can go." So we decided to take it up a notch meeting with the Atorney Generals. One of the most memorable things about Mr. Turner were the community people meeting there from JACL and NCRR, L.A., the area, different parts of Washington, D.C., et cetera. The takeaway was the tie of baseball analogy. If there's a tie, the tie will go to the runner, which meant that his attitude would be that if there were enough evidence, enough of a case to warrant a certain... like equal on each side, the tie would go to the runner. And I thought, okay, that's good, at least we've got that. He was able to turn some of the categories around fairly quickly, which would be, I think, the Naval Language School people, because they weren't incarcerated, they weren't forcibly removed, but there were definitely ways that made it easier for the Justice Department to grant reparations. And certainly all those categories are gone over in the book, in the NCRR book.

We met also with Deval Patrick when he was Assistant AG of Civil Rights, and he used the terminology that he was going to use an "expansive interpretation" of the law, which was also important to us. Because by this point, all we could really fight for was a more liberal expansive interpretation of intent of the law, things like that, which were a little more gray area. And when cases were reversed, of course, there were always celebrations. I remember the railroad workers, which is really a huge category we worked with, and Fumi Shimada, who was one of the key people. By the way, if I forget to mention it, Fumi did have another complaint that we'll talk about, but celebrations and getting together.

And a side note, that I spoke about learning our own history, who knew about the railroad workers and their plight, the horror of being in, living in trailers and chicken coops, because the railroads had fired them and kicked them out of company housing. Who knew about the Japanese Latin Americans (JLA)? Very few. And for NCRR to work with the Japanese Latin Americans, Japanese Peruvian oral history project with Grace Shimizu, for those years, we became a founding member of the Campaign for Justice, which fought for Japanese Latin Americans. We were ever so thrilled when, then, Bill Lann Lee, because of the Clinton administration, by then, we were able to get a lot of... his people, Clinton's people, the appointments he made were very favorable to us. Fisher, I'm sorry, I forgot his first name, very important person. It's probably in the book also. But along with Bill Lann Lee, the placement of people like Stuart Ishimaru, Rose Ochi and community liaison work, these were all key things. I'm not quite sure, because I don't know, I have never heard the specifics, of how the JLA settlement was reached. But that Bill Lann Lee came to the community, came to Little Tokyo, made the announcement towards the end of the '90s that it was decided that there would be a settlement and that the railroad workers and the JLAs, at different times, would receive redress and reparations. It was unfortunate that the JLAs received only five thousand, which they felt was bittersweet. That was a key word that people like Alice Nishimoto, Alicia and Carmen Mochizuki, Hector Watanabe, the people that we worked with, mentioned. Because the suffering that they and their parents went through during the time, during World War II. So anyway, NCRR was very, very pleased to work so quickly with the JLAs during that time and create our own history. Write our history, hear their voices, be able to record them, and have them as what really did happen, in depth with great meaning. By the action of one particular president, one particular executive order, and the impact, not just the immediate, but resonated for generations, it had the ripple effect. And even today, people, young people will speak about how they felt about their parents or grandparents' incarceration and how it impacted them and their families, and it's something that we still talk about. And yeah, that's why we keep going. [Laughs]

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.