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EK: Do you think a similar program could be established today?

KO: Not today, not with the current administration. There would be no way because of the makeup of Congress. It would make such a bill for reparations for a particular targeted group, could have a good chance of passing the House, but not the Senate, and would be vetoed by this president, and he probably would have some unfortunate words to use in regard to it. However, being optimistic, things change. And I feel that the nation has access to a lot more information than we did back in the early '80s to advance the cause of redress and reparations. I always remind groups that we speak to, we used typewriters, we had regular telephones, there were no mobile phones, no cell phones, no social media, everything that makes life so quick and easy today. We remember using a lot of carbon paper, white-out, liquid paper, things that kids have no idea what we're talking about, telegrams, we had a telegram campaign. But today, I think that there's a groundswell of good people, good justice-minded people and organizations, NCRR participates in that today with current demonstrations against the detention of immigrants, their treatment, inhumane treatment, the separation of families, which we hope is diminishing, the creation of more and more detention centers instead of placing immigrants and asylees in homes and in communities. So we were very, very active in that campaign and have done fundraisers recently with NP, an affiliate organization, Nikkei Progressives, which kind of overlaps NCRR, draws a younger crowd also, which we were very, very interested in doing. Raised tens of thousands of dollars for helping immigrants today, and are dispersing that money for when the people are finally released from detention. They don't have any money, and so we were able to help these community organizations to give them seed money to get going, things like that. But getting back to can it happen today, NCRR is also engaged in a discussion, big discussion about African American reparations. And it was, in 2004, we even had a speaker, Dr. David Horn, come from Cal State Northridge to talk about what the community, African American community wanted, which we feel is the most important thing. And he was able to raise our awareness because we couldn't speak to that topic without knowing how the community felt. So I think that speaks to NCRR's going back to the grassroots. What do the people need, what do they want, what do they demand? And I guess it's why we're still around. As an all-volunteer organization, that's amazing.

We are funded through donations, a few grant projects for our work. I've got to put a plug in for the fact of those grant projects. We were able to create a short film, Stand Up for Justice, about Ralph Lazo. He was the Mexican Irish American, who at the age of sixteen, went to camp with his friends, to Manzanar, stayed for two years or more, and then was in the military, etcetera. But he was a lifelong friend of the Japanese American community. We have photos of him in our book showing up at rallies, Day of Remembrances. He was one of the ronin for the NCJAR class action suit. But NCRR created a film about him to use in high school classes. We have video, change to video DVD, the commission hearing tapes. We were not quick to do that, but finally the 1981 commission hearings in Los Angeles are now on DVD available, and we've sent them out to universities, Asian Studies programs. We have a short twenty-testimony version for use in classrooms and organizations, because it's a really, really powerful source, for people to hear the voices of people who were actually incarcerated. No longer is it just text in a book or something you've heard about, but when you hear their voices and what really happened to them, it's a very powerful experience. So once again, our gold mine, the wealth, it's kind of like the riches of our community, lie in these books and stories and DVDs. And NCRR also received, like, grants from this CLPEP grants for oral histories of key NCRR persons, and those are reflected in the book. We've kind of excerpted some of those key oral histories to show what a range of people made up NCRR, are just community folks.

Other things that we've published for educational purposes, a curriculum guide. Other resources to teach, which was, again, one of [our] "Principles of Unity," to teach about what happened to a large group of people because of the unfortunately, worse than unfortunate, actions of an executive, which we learned now, really based on, oh, the CWRIC, the book, Personal Justice Denied, oh my gosh. We use that as an important tool in the redress strategy, too. When we could quote their summary, their findings of the commissioners, that the incarceration was based on race prejudice, wartime hysteria, and then the big one, or another big one, failure of political leadership. We have quoted that endlessly, not only within in our own community, but to others who still lack the resolve that it was unfair and unjust. We'll say, "Well, you know, this high panel said it was, and the Congress passed a bill or a law." So even in this day and age, education is always key. We have a lot of work to do because places we go, still people don't know about wartime incarceration of Japanese Americans. It's a continuing cycle of having to educate and share and teach the lessons of. And so NCRR will always go quickly to the lessons learned, and that our legacy is to teach and to share, but the lessons are that it could happen again, and it does, and how people can speak out and participate. And even if a bill is not passed in your favor, then it's important to speak out and be on the record and know that we weren't just silent and that it was going to pass. That it was not okay, and I see that happening more and more in this recent decade, more protests, which is terrific.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.