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EK: So what happened once the bill was passed? How did you expect the redress process to play out?

KO: Let me just interject, huge parties. We had video watching parties at the Japanese American Cultural Community Center, which was one of our home bases there. It's a large facility. We streamed or watched the Senate vote, the Congressional floor speeches, and we would just be there with crowds of people celebrating and cheering and applauding every time there was something really positive. And a big party, a day of celebration when the bill did pass. And I remember Sox Kitashima from the Bay Area, who was one of the leaders of their redress and reparations, she would bring her friends down, they made a ton of sushi. She and her San Francisco friends brought all the sushi down to L.A., and Fred and Kathryn Korematsu came down, certainly John Ota, who was a staunch NCRR person, so many I could not begin to name. But the entire plaza, a large area of the JACCC, was full of people. We had a program, but mostly we celebrated because truth be told, there were many of us in NCRR who did not think it would happen. Even back in 1982 onwards, even if we picked up a little momentum, it would die in committee, we would have all these setbacks. We did not know if it would happen. Of course, we didn't care, it was the principle. We fought on, and that it passed was amazing. Okay, that was cut short because we found out that there was no money appropriated. [Laughs] So we're going, "What in the world?" We had a huge Day of Protest. This was, again, at the JACCC plaza to protest the fact that it was insult to injury to not have the appropriations. It just took about another year, Senator Inouye was a leader in getting the funding and getting the entitlement, so that was like a big relief to us. Because we had to change our campaign, it was mostly protest letters, petitioning, and a lot of angry feelings, too.  When it was funded, we could take a breath and learn more about the ORA and how it would be carried out. And so NCRR did stay very, very involved. I don't think we skipped a beat. We were involved with initial communications.

And one of my greatest memories is of Bob Bratt, the director of ORA, coming to Los Angeles. The first community meeting was at Centenary Methodist Church, right in the heart of Little Tokyo, and the room was packed to capacity with Japanese Americans wanting to know, "What next?" And Bob, my first impression was, number one, he was tall. [Laughs] He seemed sort of shy and kind of humble, and not like what you might expect some Department of Justice bureaucrat to look like. He was, certainly he wore a suit and a tie, but his manner of speech, his presentation was really down to earth. I'd say that that would be a key description of Bob Bratt is "down to earth." He was humble, he was very warm and friendly. And even after the meeting, he stayed and didn't rush out to catch his plane, that kind of thing. He met some of the key people, I was one of the first to go up and introduce myself with other key NCRR folks, and he really kind of hung back and just got to know us a little bit at that time. That was a really, really, a good sign of things to come. And he, of course, was professional, did his duty, gave us all the information that he had at that time, told us what he knew, how it would work, which was key. And then explained that through the regulations, it was their job to find the recipients, folks that we did not know about. And then I'd say that that would be my first impression of the ORA, and then as soon as we met people like Joanne Chiedi and Tink Cooper, who was the attorney, and Lisa Johnson. I would say that we could tell right away that Tink had a job to do as the attorney, as the lawyer of the group, it was a little bit different. And sometimes I'd be frustrated with Tink because of that hard line of reading the literal interpretation of the act and the regulations, got a little frustrating. But she was a terrific person. I could tell that she cared. And I think as a team it worked well because you kind of needed that person who would direct, I guess, the ORA to the literal, the words of the Act. But I would say that we were the most comfortable with Bob, Joanne, and Lisa, the people we met at the outset.

And I think the community meetings were super important, so that was wonderful that the ORA did so many. Because, to me, the people, after the people and the community got to know the ORA, that was the bridge. That was key to how the program would run, and what the reactions of the community would be. I do have to interject that the Rafu Shimpo newspaper in Los Angeles, as well as the Hokubei and Nichi Bei, I'm sorry, the other one in the Bay Area, were key. As the vernaculars for our community, they covered everything, kept a wider group of people aware of what was going on with redress and reparations. NCRR would shoot press releases to them all the time, they became our best friends, our allies in this campaign. So I don't want it to be overlooked that the Rafu Shimpo was an important part of redress/reparations and working with the ORA.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.