Densho Digital Repository - Robert "Bob" Bratt Interview (Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-6-9)

<Begin Segment 9>

EK: So how long were you with the program? You were there from '88 to... BB: To '91. I can't remember the exact month. I do remember what happened. EK: Full time on redress?

BB: Full time on redress, until... it's the most infamous story that went down, until a famous House hearing, and it was in the spring, I want to say it was in the spring of '91, March of '91, there was a House Appropriations Hearing on the Department's budget and on redress. And I'm not name dropping when I give this one, given current events, and that was the Deputy Attorney General was testifying and all the heads of litigating Divisions were sitting behind. And I was in the other room talking with a friend of mine, a woman that was a buddy of mine from the budget staff, and we were sitting there chatting. And they came up, a congressman started asking questions about redress, and he was from California, southern part of California, very much not in favor of redress, and started pounding on the Deputy Attorney General about redress, and he couldn't answer the questions. And the head of Civil Rights couldn't answer the questions about redress, and the head of Civil Rights said, "Bob Bratt's in the other room, I'm going to bring him in and let him answer these questions." So they brought me in to the appropriation hearing room and swore me in, and I got up there. And he was just basically making the point of, we shouldn't be paying "Japanese" redress, and that's kind of what he said, and some other things I just think he kind of wanted to get on the record, which clearly the law didn't provide us to do. But again, I think he was.

EK: "Japanese" meaning Japanese nationals, not Japanese Americans.

BB: Nationals, not Japanese Americans, and that was the crux of what I remember him saying. And I know he was just doing these things because the district he was from, found out later, was a very conservative district. So at the end of the hearing, I'm walking out, and the Deputy Attorney General came up to thank me for it, and Civil Rights head at the time came up and thanked me for it. But the head of the Criminal Division came up to talk to me, and the head of the Criminal Division was this guy named Bob Muller. And he said, "You're Bob Bratt?" And I go, "Yes," and he goes, "I've been looking for an executive director for two years now, I can't tell you how many people I interviewed. Would you come down to my office on Monday morning at eight? I want to talk to you about it." I said, "Mr. Muller, I'd love to come join the Criminal Division but I love my job here, I love redress." It's about three and a half years I think I'd been doing it at the time, and, "I love my staff in the Civil Rights Division." And Civil Rights is, was a great Division. So I came down on Monday morning at eight, and he said, "I just finished talking to Bill Barr, and Bill and I decided that you would be an excellent choice to be the next executive director of the Criminal Division." [Laughs] I said, "I don't have any choice in this one, do I?" He goes, "No, you don't." Okay, I get the drill. I'm not real happy, but I get the drill, I'll do it. But I'm going to bring down three demands for you that I've got to have," anyway, which I won't go into. But the next day I came back and we sat down, and so that was it for me in redress. Did not want to leave, but they really had a significant problem in the Criminal Division, which, eighteen months later we got fixed. It took us eighteen months to get it fixed, and then Dee Dee and Joanne took over and kept going from there.