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EK: What, in your mind, were some of the biggest challenges that the office faced, and how did they work to address or overcome them?

TC: Well, a lot was just the logistics and the fact that there were so many elderly individuals and that there may be some language issues. But it was just astonishing the job that Bob Bratt and the initial group did to identify and locate the people. It was amazing. And then I guess when I first came aboard and then the first challenge was about the constitutionality of the Act. So we were glad to win that, but it was a very unique chapter.

EK: What would you say, on a personal level, were some of the takeaways from your time at redress?

TC: Oh, it was just... it was just a fantastic group to work with. I mean, everyone in ORA gave their best. There was a standard of excellence, everyone just cared so much about the program, so it was a pleasure to come to work, to be with the people, it was also fascinating to learn about the history and some of these other little nuggets of history you didn't know. Then another special relationship was with the JA community and going out and meeting so many people. There were a few individuals who were just tremendous, one of them was Sox Kitashima from San Francisco, and she was a petite woman, but just a dynamo, and she was so helpful. She found some homeless individuals who were eligible and was able to get an address for them and work with them to get them paid. Another strong supporter was Kay Ochi, who was in Los Angeles. But, I mean, the people in the office and the people in the Special Verification Unit, it was really unique and special.

EK: So continuing on that line, what personal impact did it have, working with this office?

TC: Oh, I mean, it was just very rewarding and fulfilling. It was such a unique opportunity, and I know some of the colleagues in Justice who defended the department in lawsuits. They seemed somewhat envious about the special role that I had, and the ability to go out and provide an apology letter and benefits to these individuals who were harmed during this period in history. So there were many people who felt this was a really, really special opportunity, and I agree, it was.

EK: Do you think a program like this could happen today?

TC: Oh, yes. I mean, I think it is happening. Part of my knowledge that I learned from redress with the World War II archival research information, I was able to [then] have other opportunities at Justice. I went to the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission [note: originally misidentified as the "Federal Claim Service Commission"] and worked on their program for the Holocaust survivors because I was helping to do research for that program. And then there was a similar World War II report about Guam and what had happened in Guam, and I worked for research in that and then drafted the report for that. And then based on the report that we wrote several years ago, recently, maybe last year, the Guam Compensation Act was passed, and so they are getting compensated for injuries that happened to them during the war. So, there were a number of opportunities, and I know other programs, Justice, the Civil Division, is working on the Vaccine Act, there's a more recent, the 9/11 Compensation Fund. And during redress, the Civil Division contacted me to discuss our procedures about identifying potential claimants and how we resolved issues about the correct statutory heirs, and that was for their radiation program. So I worked with them a few times on that, and then again I'd worked with the Foreign Claims Settlement Commission.

EK: Thank you.

[Interruption]

EK: Tink, could you continue talking a little bit more about some of the other programs?

TC: Yes. I think before I came aboard in 1991, a group from the Japanese Canadian redress had stopped by ORA to see how things were being processed here, and there was information about it. I think they also called us later on. And then it was interesting to learn about what had happened in Canada, that I did not realize that something similar had happened in Canada that about between twenty and twenty-five thousand Japanese Canadians were evacuated from the West Coast. And they started also paying compensation, I think, in the late '80s. And then something I found interesting was that Canada had the internment camps until 1949, until a few years after the war ended. And then the one other aspect that came up out of the Japanese American redress, is that there was a law passed about the Italian Americans, and it required the attorney general to draft a report in less than a year just to describe the circumstances of the Italian Americans during World War II in the U.S. And then I think no one in the Justice Department realized about it for the first few months, and then all of a sudden they said, "Oh, you have eight or nine months to finish this report." And so what happened is that they contacted the AAG for Civil Rights, spoke to the executive officer who was, DeDe at the time, DeDe Greene, and said, "Can you collect some of the former ORA staff to do this Italian American research?" and we said, "Sure." And we had a lot of the information from the Japanese American program, that there was a lot of things from INS that reflected both the Japanese, Italian and Germans. So a big group from ORA was called back, Joanne Chiedi, I was, Aaron Zajic, Kay Roso and number of them. We were able to get that report out in a year and provide it to Congress, and then it's also published on the DOJ website.

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