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EK: Are there any others whose contributions you want to mention or point out?

JC: Okay, so I mentioned Alice Kale, who was just unbelievable. I mean, she really was the backbone of the creation of the start of the verification. And then there was Valerie O'Brien, who was our attorney at the time, who worked with the Hill and worked with a lot of these statutory requirements. And, again, hard worker, sharp as a whip, just wonderful person. I know you're interviewing Tink Cooper, I'm trying to think of folks that you may not have... there are several individuals that I wish I could remember all of their names who worked on the outreach part of it and from a media perspective, but I'm terrible with names. [Laughs] There's a lot of unsung heroes probably, but everyone, Eileen...

EK: Fukuda?

JC: Fukuda, yeah, was another one who worked with the verification group. Oh, Paul Suddes, he was the first Deputy Administrator of the program, and he had the hard job of sending out ineligibility letters, so that was unfortunate.

[Interruption]

EK: So I understand that you worked pretty extensively with Bob Bratt in the early years. Could you talk a little bit about that time?

JC: Okay. So Bob hired me, and I do remember going into his office, and at that time, he was the executive officer of the Civil Rights Division at the Department of Justice, and he also had this role of the administrator of the redress program, so he had two jobs. And he was in his mid-thirties, had a lot more hair, I have to give him a little bit of a hard time. But just a tremendous amount of energy. And I actually remembered seeing a picture of his family behind him as he was interviewing me, and his brother, who I kept looking at going, I know his brother. Why do I know his brother? Well his brother, Keith, and I, would walk, we'd basically leave work together, we worked in different places, but we went to the same metro. He was a really nice guy, and it was nice, also during that time period, Ninth and Pennsylvania was still going through a transition. And I was like, oh my god, it's such a small world, so in our interview, I was like, "Is that your brother, or who is that?" So I happened to know Bob only through his brother, but I also remember, one, just a nice, incredibly smart guy, young, and I remember this huge office. And I thought, wow, because, again, I'm a GS-11, he's an executive officer, like the CEO of the Civil Rights Division. I thought, I would like to be in his role one day. But I would say Bob was always a mentor and coach, and I still hold on to some of his mentoring and coaching and just the way he deals with people. So, again, he's very gregarious, he is a people person, he's very funny. So if you're nervous, he will help you be comfortable in an environment, but I remember when I was interviewing with him, he took out of his top pocket a yellow sticky. And on that yellow sticky he had, "Our mission is to identify, locate and pay Japanese Americans who were interned during World War II." And I learned from him after that, everything was on a sticky note. And if you weren't able to articulate your message and it didn't fit on a sticky note, then no one would remember. If you're going to sit there and talk for hours and hours or just drone on, you're going to tune people out. So really fine tune your mission, be passionate about what you're doing. And if people tell you a story, or this is their recollection of what's going on, listen to them. Don't say, "No, you're wrong, that's not what I understand, this is not what's in our record," listen. Take the time to listen, don't challenge. Because you're from the government and they'll just see you with all the power and with all the cards in your hand, and they won't feel empowered. So in this program it was really important to be a good listener, to understand what your mission was, to understand you're talking to people who probably haven't talked about this experience for forty years. And again, it's probably the first time that the family members are hearing this experience. So be compassionate and have a lot of empathy. And to this day, he is one of my best friends, and he's been that guiding light in my career. So just an unbelievable, brilliant leader, who really, the attorney general at the time hired the right person for this job. We were lucky.

EK: Thanks, Joanne.

JC: Sure.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2019 Emi Kuboyama. All Rights Reserved.