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TH: Talk about some of your recollections of working with the community, maybe some memorable events. I mean, you were mentioning trips that it wasn't just, say, sorting through applications in Washington, D.C., it was also members of the office hopping on a plane going to those communities and working within those communities as well.

EK: Right. I mean, personally, I can recall going to everywhere from New York, up and down the West Coast to Hawaii, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles on a number of occasions. And we made these trips regularly and we would usually bring a handful of staff and our laptops and spent several hours. Sometimes it would be an evening event, sometimes it would be both a daytime and an evening event in one day. And often... what I remember most was the fact that in the process of talking to people to understand what happened to them during World War II, it was often apparent that the younger generation, the kids who were not perhaps alive during World War II, or grandkids, had never heard the story until they started talking to us at these workshops about what had happened to us. And just being privileged to watch that unfold and really understand how people often viewed this as shameful or wanted to put it behind them and seeing what happened when those stories were uncovered and were revealed to the subsequent generations was tremendously impactful. And those are the types of things that I remember. And, you know, also just lots of fond memories, getting to know these people and going out for meals afterwards and all of that. But definitely a unique opportunity to get to know people in the community.

TH: Who were some of the community leaders that you recall being involved?

EK: [Laughs] Well, some of them are folks that have also been interviewed for this project. So Kay Ochi in L.A., Sox Kitashima in San Francisco, Bill Kaneko in Hawaii. And those are the folks that I recall dealing with. I also met Dale Minami through this process in San Francisco. But I know there were significantly more folks involved before my time as well as -- and I apologize, I'm missing a lot of people that were there during my time as well. But these were people who just, you know, came from all walks of life and were really just dedicated to the cause. And it was kind of a cross section of people, both in terms of backgrounds and ages and experiences that really, really made this a successful process.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2020 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.