Densho Digital Repository
Emi Kuboyama, Office of Redress Administration (ORA) Oral History Project Collection
Title: Pamela Rouse Dixon Interview
Narrator: Pamela Rouse Dixon
Interviewer: Emi Kuboyama
Location: Temple Hills, Maryland
Date: September 12, 2019
Densho ID: ddr-densho-1020-9-5

<Begin Segment 5>

EK: Pam, could you share a little more about what it was like when you first learned about the internment?

PD: When I first learned about it, it didn't shock me, I didn't know about what was going on, but to learn about it, it just kind of piqued my interest more. It made me want to learn more about it and made me want to make sure I helped, do whatever I can do on our end to help these people out.

EK: So you were on the front line of answering a lot of the incoming phone calls. Could you share some of your recollections?

PD: Being on the front line, I was answering the calls, I was doing the data entry, and when some of the calls came in, it kind of made me a little sad. They were always good calls, but it made me sad because some of the people, they were older, so you could hear it in their voices that they just wanted to be, get what they deserved, so they just wanted to make sure we had all the information. They would maybe keep me on the phone for at least thirty minutes or so at a time, and I had other calls coming in, but I always made sure that I finished up with them and made sure they were comfortable enough to know that they were going to be taken care of.

EK: Could you talk a little bit more about your career after redress?

PD: After redress, I'm still working with some of the same people that I worked with when I started. But I moved on from being a data entry technician, I started getting into the IT field, so that's where I am now. I'm still with the Civil Rights Division, and I'm just over in the IT side now. But I work again with some of the same people that I started with at redress.

EK: And those people being...

PD: Tink Cooper, Gary Wong, Aaron Zajic, Jay Kim. Those are a few of the older ones, they've been there forever, too.

EK: Is there anything else that you'd like to add?

PD: No, just again that I'm glad that I was part of that program, at that time, helping them out.

EK: Thank you, Pam.

PD: You're welcome.

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