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EK: Do you have any other stories that you think, that you'd really like to share, or that you recall in this process?

MW: Well, like I said, one of the things is building the whole team concept. And because we were under the deadline, we did a lot of overtime, I guess would be the nice way to put it. And so one of the things early on Aaron and I had decided was on the Saturdays when our team was in, we would buy the pizza. I think by the end of the, I think they were sort of pizza-ed out after a while. But it was also one of those things to say we're a team. Yes, we're verifying your work, yes, we're your supervisors, but we will do the same kind of work you will. And for Aaron, that was his first job out of college. And so I think, I hope I was able to mentor him to teach him some of those kinds of skills and the importance of why. But they were a fun group. I mean, our really funny one is that many of them had young children or school-aged children. So you know how the schools have all those, selling chocolate bars and fundraisers. And so they would come in, "Oh, would you guys..." so the first time I'm like, "Oh, yeah, sure," and so we're filling out forms and all that. Then they came in and we're like, okay, there's something wrong with this picture, Aaron. We have three sausages and no cheese, we have five chocolate bars and no peanut butter. So after that we started saying, "Okay, you get cheese, I'll get sausage." And we constantly had... but we also felt that was a way for us to give back to our team as well, so it was just sort of fun. But my funny Aaron story is, Aaron's Jewish. And during Passover, there are certain things he could eat and not eat. I grew up Methodist, I had no clue, and he's just like, "Oh, no, no, next week I can only eat X, Y and Z." And so I said, "Okay, I can do this, too." So his mom would make matzo ball soup, I made egg salad, brought in matzo, and during Passover we would eat together that way. [Laughs]

EK: Now, were you in the Department of Labor building at that point?

MW: No. We were at 1333 F Street. So my whole time there, I was only at F Street.

EK: So what would you say are your primary takeaways from having, in hindsight, having gone through this experience with the Office of Redress Administration?

MW: It's like when I first got there, I kept thinking, wow, this is such a way could give back to the community. And because redress had been an integral part of my life up until it, it was like, "Wow, this is really cool," kind of a thing. And then when I got to do this Public Education Fund, it was like full circle for me. It was like, oh, I got to do both of these. So it's a unique perspective that I now have now that I'm older and wiser. But yeah, I think really what it was was the sense of community. I can give back to the Nisei generation.

EK: Were there other Japanese Americans who were involved with ORA at that point?

MW: On staff or in the community?

EK: On staff.

MW: Aileen Fukuda was also doing, helping identify people, one of the research kinds of people. And then Frank Pfeiffer was actually half Japanese but fluent in Japanese, unlike the others of us who know no Japanese. So he was also brought on partly for the help line, we were talking about that earlier. Because in case there were recipients who only spoke Japanese or were more comfortable speaking Japanese, he was able to get their questions answered or help them with the process as well.

EK: Are there any other people that you want to mention that contributed to this whole process?

MW: All along, well, a lot of the contractors, a lot of them were contractors so it was different. But key people that were there... see, the other piece is, if you look at the roster of people, many of them stayed for the duration. And I think that says something about both the mission of the office and the management of the office, that they were committed to seeing this through.

EK: And you're talking both about employees of DOJ as well as contractors.

MW: Right. Because there was very little turnover as far as that goes. I'm one of the few, but yeah, there was very little turnover, and I think it was because people were committed. Even knowing that it was going to sunset. Because very easily, it would have been easy for, especially the career folks to say, "Uh-oh, we're sunsetting in a few years, let me go find another position. All of the DOJ employees, I believe, did find other positions within the Civil Rights Division, and many of the contractors also were able to then be contractors in other sections and departments as well, and eventually some actually became career staff.

EK: Any other thoughts that you want to make sure that we capture? Stories?

MW: Not at the moment.

EK: Thank you, Martha.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.