<Begin Segment 3>

EK: So can you talk a little bit more about the outreach efforts and your involvement with all of that?

MW: This is where Bob, I mean, basically... JACL was one of the primary redress groups. There was also a group, NCRR, which was the National Coalition for Redress and Reparations, and then there was another group, NCJAR, which was the National Coalition for Japanese American Redress, I believe. Those were the three main groups. But also, there was outreach to the churches, because we felt that that was also another place where education efforts could come up. And so one of the things that I was able to do because part of my background -- I mean, I've been a JACL member since I was sixteen, so I know a lot of the people. And then with my ecumenical group, it was also through the Asian United Methodists, so I also had that whole network. And because of the ecumenical work I was doing, I then met Asian Baptists and Episcopalians and Presbyterians as well. So I was able to give them a lot of resources to do outreach.

EK: So did you go and do those outreach efforts with them, or was it primarily kind of getting them in touch with the right people?

MW: Right, it was more connecting people up. I mean, I think all of us did a few trips along the way.

EK: So what was staffing like in the early days? How big was the office and what were the different roles that people had?

MW: So you had some administrative people, three or four, like Joanne, Carolyn Russell, and people like that, and then Bob is the administrator. And then you had a unit that was focused on research. So Alice Kale, Val O'Brien, were instrumental in, they were there at the beginning. And it was poring through the manifests from the ships that had gone back and forth, tried to identify people that way. Going through all the camp records, because each camp, they had rosters, I guess, would be the closest word. And so it was basically going through the rosters and matching it to death records and social security, those were the two government ones that they were using as the basis. Okay, is this Watanabe, oh, there's three of them. And then tried to match date of birth, social security number, and those kinds of things. So you had a unit doing that. Bob had the foresight to bring in some key researchers, Aiko Herzig-Yoshinaga, and her husband Jack Herzig, who had been instrumental in research with the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians, which, for the historical perspective, that was established and that was where the recommendations eventually came for redress. The Commission did hearings in cities across the nation, and it was really the first time that many of the Nisei had shared their stories. Most of the children had never heard it before. Right, because growing up, they were like, "Oh, yeah, during the war, I was in camp." And of course, our definition of camp, we're like, "Oh, that sounds like fun," and they were like, "Yeah, it was okay." That would be the answer you would get, not realizing until later, you were older, that wait, their definition of camp is not the camp, our definition. But the hearings really was the first opportunity where people were actually giving testimony, "This is what my life was like." And I think it was really eye-opening for the whole community and the nation. So once the Commission came up with their report, which here's a pretty copy, they came up with three recommendations in the end. The first was monetary compensation, the second was a letter of apology from the government, and then the third was establishing a fund so that something like this would never occur again. So those were basically the three parts that became the Civil Liberties Act of 1988.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.