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EK: So were you involved, or NCRR involved, in getting people to go and testify at the commission hearings?

KO: Absolutely. I was not, however, NCRR was key. When they first got information about the hearings, it was only going to be done in Washington, D.C., or in other, like, East Coast areas. And the focus, of course, was to bring them to the people, the people who suffered most, and not make it just a panel or testifiers who were scholars, researchers, academics, researchers, but the people who suffered from what the government had done to them, EO 9066. And so through working with Joan Bernstein and other ones of the commissioners, they broadened their scope. They came to Los Angeles, spent three days in L.A., and then other key areas along the West Coast, San Francisco. So I think there were nine cities that they visited and took testimony, and Los Angeles, there were approximately a hundred and fifty testifiers. And what is brilliant, NCRR, because of our close collaboration with Visual Communications, which was the oldest Asian Pacific Islander media organization in the country, we filmed it. NCRR filmed the testimonies from Los Angeles, and it may be, possibly, the only city where we have the full video history and transcripts of the commission hearings. So they're a powerful tool. I call it our "gold mine" because it is such a wealth of information of what really happened during World War II, and that enabled us to write, speak our own history, before which there was so little that was documented from the perspective of the victims, those who survived. And I recall back in my history books in high school, there may have been a paragraph or two. But my teacher didn't teach it, I mean, certainly, and so we've come after so many decades, a full pendulum swing to the fact that there was much curriculum available, many books written, and I do have to jump to the fact that the CLA, the Civil Liberties Act of '88 and the education fund, really kickstarted broadening the scope of the education that we could do. And NCRR has been the recipient of many of the grants, too, so we're very, very fortunate and grateful to that aspect of the CLA.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.