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AG: And then as we began to grow and the program got a little bit bigger, we had a number of changes, and I got into the payments realm. So my next to last official job was being the payments person. And that was a different role because it really, it dealt with the IT side of the house, making sure that we had the proper records in the proper order to be issued. I was sharing with a staffer today that I used to... when it was time to pay, we would take a big tape that looked like a movie reel, and we would take it over to the Bicentennial Building and they would cut the checks, literal IRS checks. And I would have to go over and pick up from a man I'll never forget, Chester A. Buster, and pick up the checks, and we'd have to count the checks to make sure that if I came to get a thousand checks, I've got a thousand checks. And then coming back to the office, pre-Uber, pre-Lyft, just strolling down the street with eight million dollars on my back, because I'm just walking. And did not think to take a cab, no, because I was, what, twenty-two, twenty-three? But still feeling like I had going across my head, "Eight million, eight million." And then just even the logistics of getting the payments out. We never had a loss... we never had a loss, people lost their checks, we never had a loss when we were doing the processing. But the suite would go on lockdown to make sure -- and it was an assembly line process -- even through the point of the purple glue sticks, making sure they were glued out and that the name was in the window. And then helping to verify, people knew, they would get a letter ahead of time saying, "Hey, in the next three weeks, you should be receiving your redress payment. If you have not received it within six weeks, please let us know. It's going to come in this type of envelope." And we did have some instances where checks did not arrive for whatever reason, and that's back-end research to work with the treasury department to make sure that it's not been negotiated. If it's been negotiated, then we would go through legal processes with the person to sort of figure out who negotiated it. One of my favorites was a gentleman who was very environmentally friendly, sort of, because he was recycling, but then he threw the check in the fire pit. And I'm like, okay, well, that's not good for the environment because you're hitting the ozone, but we didn't think about global warming at that time. So he burned up his check, so he sent me like a little teeny corner. And he was a younger guy so he definitely got "Angela." He's like, "Angela, here's the corner back." I'm like, okay... his name was Michael, I don't remember what his last name was. But, so we would have people do that, or people who held onto the checks for such a length of time that they had expired. And so we would have to do a reissue. And you could understand, and then you had people who just did not want to cash it. "I want it, I want to show my children, but I don't want to do it." I'm like, "But think of how you could invest the money." "No, I just want the check." So they would frame it, and they would tell us, "Hey, I framed it. I'm not going to cash." Because we would have to go, once we ran our reports, because okay, we issued six hundred checks, five hundred and ninety-two have been negotiated and reconciled. For the eight, reach out to the eight, "Oh yeah, no." And that was really it, it's like, "No, I'm not going to cash  it, so you can stop calling." "I got to call you four more times." Like, "Okay, fine, I'll talk to you four more times, but I'm not going to."

So really in the payments realm it was managing the money, making sure, working with the executive officer, that all of our allocations were lined up appropriately, that we had the resources to get the checks out in a timely manner, and then monitor to make sure that they were being paid in a timely season. And it could be hard because as we got into younger eligibility groups, the appreciation of, well, yes, our birthdays are two days apart, but for whatever reason, you're getting yours before I'm getting mine. I think people were very used to the orderliness that the organization ran with that they knew that it was by age. And that in the community, because the community would have lots of different meetings to explain to people, "But you've got to get your paperwork in. It doesn't matter that you're younger, you turned it in first," they're still going to hit by age. But as we got into younger, particularly the kids that were in camp, you would get more of, "Well, why haven't I gotten my check? My girlfriend Betty Sue got it." "Sorry." Or Betty Sue neglected to tell you it wasn't her check, it was the check for her parents. Oftentimes some of the more difficult conversations I would have would be, let's say, for unmarried women who thought they would get a siblings check. They didn't understand that it was a parent-child relationship. It was a vertical relationship, not a lateral one. And people just sort of thinking that, oh, I thought I would get my brother's. But saying, "No, it's the parents'." "Well, we haven't seen this kid," all families have separation, "I haven't seen my brother in twelve years, what do you mean you can't just divide it by two?" Because we have it listed, and until we can find some evidence that he is not available, that he's not on this side. And we would hold stuff, working with the attorneys, we would hold some of those payments in the safe that we had in the office until there was nothing else to do, and then we would reissue that payment. But then we had to verify again, okay, your mother's check was cut by four, we held onto one, now we've determined that that fourth person cannot be found. You other three, need you to re-verify, where do you live, show us the information. Most times those three were available, but sometimes somebody else had gone on, so then it's getting that documentation. So that could be a little bit of back and forth. Generally speaking, people were good natured about it, but there were definitely those times when they had something planned and we weren't moving fast enough, so I think that's with anybody.

EK: Were you involved with securing the apology letters from the White House?

AG: Yes, for President Clinton, we had to go and pick them up, actually. I remember getting them printed, and I think he made some slight tweaks to it. You could definitely tell what his name was. I think with President Bush, I have one of those, it was a souvenir, but looks like "Cybird," and you look later and you see it's Poppy Bush. But yes, in terms of getting them and getting the reprint and even inserting that, people really appreciated that. I think that as you went on and you talked to some of the older recipients, that made them whole. The money is nice... or the money isn't nice. I definitely had people say, "It's blood money, I don't want any of it." But the apology, to know that the country had apologized. And even as the organization started to develop the monuments and the memorials to the internment, people really appreciated that, those kinds of things, because they go on forever. The money comes, the money goes. But to be able to say I can go to First Street in Washington, D.C. and see the different, the cranes, and see what it means, and see the different camps represented, and to go to other places and to be able to just sit. And I've taken my children, I have two boys, they're fifteen and nine, but I took them when they were younger over to the one on First Street and said, "This is how Mommy got here, this is where I started." And that was before I went to Jacob's class, so he shouldn't have been surprised, but he was. He's twelve.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.