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EK: So following the hearings, could you talk about what NCRR -- you mentioned going out and using the testimony as education. Could you talk a little bit more about what happened post hearings before the Civil Liberties Act was passed?

KO: For NCRR, outreach was key. And lots of outreach speaking, we created a speakers panel because in those days, nobody really wanted to speak. We trained each other and ourselves, somebody would take the lead who was more comfortable with it, and I would be like their assistant, but then I would take a small part. It was really a training ground for us to be able to speak out and broaden our scope. So we did a lot of speaking. In '84 we had our first "test the waters" delegation to Washington, D.C., and I was on that delegation with Miya Iwataki, Bert Nakano from San Francisco, probably Sox Kitashima, John Ota, I'm sorry I can't give you all the names. But we went to Washington and had press packets because NCRR worked with Congressman Mervyn Dymally in Los Angeles. He represented the Gardena/Compton areas, but Gardena certainly had a large number of constituency of Japanese Americans. He was a wonderful person, such a heart. He readily jumped in and supported redress and reparations and helped NCRR with his people, his staff, to create a bill demanding monetary reparations and an apology. This is at the end of 1982. It would be introduced and did not get too far, but it was sort of like started the momentum for the bill that came out in '84 that was authored by more of the Nikkei legislators. So we feel it was a start, and it was the vehicle that we used to go to Washington, D.C., in '84 and talk to people about redress and reparations. And so many of them knew nothing about the camps, and even if they were in California. I remember from Fresno, Chip Pashayan, I'm not sure if that's the correct pronunciation.  He knew so little about incarceration, wartime incarceration, but he did give us a box of raisins as a gift. [Laughs] Little things like that were pretty memorable. We felt like we were making a start, but then our purpose, of course, was involving people, so in '87 we did a very large delegation to Washington. The bills had picked up a lot of momentum and were being introduced.

So the bills were introduced and we took a huge lobbying delegation, NCRR, about a hundred twenty people, because Miya Iwataki, NCRR's legislative chair, worked with Congressman, she actually worked for Congressman Dymally, she helped, with his office, set up all the congressional visits. She and I put together the lobbying teams. We took ribbons, long yellow ribbons from all over the country, primarily Los Angeles and the West Coast, with names of people who could not participate but would give small donations to help the delegation. We have videos of all of that, but it speaks toward our strategy. Our strategy was legislative, clearly. It was not through the courts which was NCJAR with William Hohri, Aiko Herzig Yoshinaga, and that group. But legislatively, we felt that we had the best chance of getting what we demanded, which was the apology, monetary reparations and the education.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.