Densho Digital Repository - Robert "Bob" Bratt Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-6-2)

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EK: So I'm going to move on now to talk about your role with the Office of Redress Administration. Could you talk a little bit about how you became involved with ORA?

BB: It was interesting because it's a little bit personal, a little bit professional. So my boss in the Civil Rights Division was a guy named Brad Reynolds, and Brad Reynolds had quite an interesting dynamic at the time in the Department in the civil rights community because of what the Republican administration was doing at the time. But the most critical thing was Brad Reynolds was very close to the Attorney General at the time, Ed Meese, way back then. And I heard that, through him, one of the places that this legislation that was pending at the time, they didn't have a home for it, and they were looking at various places in Justice because it wouldn't fit anywhere in particular. They were looking over at this grant area, and they were looking over at one of the bureaus for it. And then he mentioned it to me, that Civil Rights was a possibility. Just kind of casually mentioned it. Well, the personal part is, I had a second cousin that was Japanese American, that had been interned, and so I was very familiar with a fair amount of what went on at the time. And also because, you know, in the Civil Rights Division, we had a really good staff, so I had a very good core staff. So what I mentioned to Brad Reynolds, between the two, was, I thought, a personal interest in it. I already knew I had a good team if we had to work on the program, and I said to him, basically, I was interested in letting us run with the legislation and work on the legislation. So that's kind of how I got started, was they just didn't know what to do with it, they, Justice, didn't know what to do with it, and I thought it would be something very interesting and rewarding for myself and for others in the Division to participate in.

EK: So could you walk us through what happened? So at that point, the legislation was still pending, it had not passed?

BB: Correct.

EK: Then what happened?

BB: Well, so then, all of a sudden, it looked like the legislation -- I remember it was, and this was a while ago, but it was five or six months before the actual signing, the bill was signed, but everybody was scurrying for, what do we do for a budget for it, and that was the first question that came up. No one had any money to administer it. So part of the reason, again, they came back and spoke to me almost six or eight months out, before the actual bill was signed was, "Would you put together a budget for it?" And so, with my financial background, and I was the number two Department budget person at one point before I came to Civil Rights, I know how to put together a budget, so all of a sudden I'm useful to the process in that I could actually produce something to be helpful for him.

So the first months of that were reading as much as you could read about background. And you know, the law was based on Personal Justice Denied, so I first got a copy of that and started... it's this thick, it's not something you read in a couple sittings. But just basically trying to do as much research as I could to understand more about what was going on, and acclimated one or two other people that were around me just to let them know. So the early pinnings of it were definitely just driven, because oh my god, we don't have any money to do anything, and the second part of it is, okay, what happens if it actually comes here? Then what are we going to do? So there was really, those were the two thoughts way back when.