Densho Digital Repository - William "Bill" Kaneko Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-11-3)

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EK: So I'd like to transition to the early days of the Office of Redress Administration. Once the bill was passed, how did you or JACL expect the redress process to play out?

BK: Yeah. So when the act was passed in, I believe, August 1988, the question was how does the government go about identifying, verifying and compensating potentially eighty to ninety thousand living AJAs? And so in Hawaii, the Japanese American Citizens League, the Honolulu chapter, was relatively new. It was founded in September of 1980, it participated in the commission hearings in Seattle. But fast forward to 1988, we were still a relatively young chapter. And the question was, how do we as an organization assist the Office of Redress to be able to identify, locate and basically ultimately work with the government to compensate Hawaii internees? And so I remember, I think I became chapter president in 1990, and previous to that was Nobu Yonamine, who was chapter president. At that time, immediately after, we were contacted by ORA. I believe our first contact was the first administrator, Bob Bratt. And then Bob called and said that he wanted to meet with us, and I believe he came down to Hawaii as an initial meeting. And we got to know him, also better understand what his role was at ORA, and then try to chart a course forward in terms of working together. And the ORA actually utilized a lot of the AJA community organizations as their link to the communities. And the Japanese American Citizens League with, at that time, I think 126 chapters, they were all over the United States and was active in the redress movement, was a natural community liaison for ORA to work alongside with, as well as other Japanese American organizations. But in Hawaii, because JACL chapter was a chapter of the national organization, we were the natural liaison to work with the ORA. And so Bob then contacted us, we met with him, I think, at the Church of the Crossroads, I believe, or someplace. And he began to explain some of his plans, and I think in... I forget what date, but he then returned in a ceremony to be able to hand out the first, ultimately the first checks to the oldest Japanese American internees in Hawaii, which was followed up with, I think in his words, checks were in the mail, about 274 other internees were processed and ultimately compensated.

EK: And how would you characterize your working relationship with Bob as well as other folks in the Office of Redress Administration?

BK: Oh, I think it was very collaborative. They were partners with a common mission of accurately identifying, verifying and ultimately compensating Japanese Americans. And they clearly had a mission to be able to identify those who were wronged because of the World War II acts, but they had, of course, a duty to uphold the law, but do it in a way that was accurate. So they had their own verification process that they had to adhere to, which was to make sure, at least for the internees, that persons identified were verified and part of a list. In Hawaii there are two major camps, Sand Island detention camp and Honouliuli. And so in Hawaii there are about two thousand Hawaii internees who were basically interned there before being shipped out to other detention camps on the mainland. So Bob and ORA had to make sure that the records were accurate and reflected, and that would be a verification of those interned.