Densho Digital Repository - Emlei "Emi" Kuboyama Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-12-4)

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TH: Let's discuss... I know you started in '94. Let's discuss, though, because you were bringing it up, the legislation, the start of redress. Let's discuss that process a little bit. Can you give us kind of an overview of what the process of redress was and maybe some of the other agencies, the kind of interconnections and intricacies of that process for claiming (reparations).

EK: Sure. So I'm certainly not an expert in that, but my understanding is that it was really a push by the Niseis and Sanseis, primarily, who were the (second and) third generation of Americans or Japanese Americans in the United States, who really had learned very little oftentimes about their parents' experiences or their grandparents' experiences during World War II. It was not something that was widely discussed. So there was a commission, the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, I believe, that basically went around the country and had hearings where, for the first time, people provided testimony about their experiences and as a result of what came out during the Commission, the Commission recommended that, recommended to Congress that there be some form of reparations or redress provided to Japanese Americans. And so that got the ball rolling in Congress and in 1988 the Civil Liberties Act was passed, which established a formal apology as well as a symbolic redress payment of $20,000 to individuals who were -- and I believe the language was "evacuated, relocated or interned as a result of federal government action." And you had to be, it was pretty limited, the legislative language was limited to those types of federal government action and was also limited to people who were alive at the time that the bill was passed in 1988. And so it was about... it took about another year, year and a half for the office to be set up within the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Bob Bratt was the one that was really in charge of getting that up and running, and it resulted, again, in the first payments and letters being issued in October of '90, so about a year, year and a half after the legislation was originally passed.