<Begin Segment 2>

FA: At Salt Lake City two years ago we talked to you, you said to Frank and Mits Koshiyama that we're going through a very, very transitional and critical period in the history of JACL. Did JACL successfully make that transition?

RS: Well, in my opinion, unfortunately, I don't think they made that transition. I think what we did was we tried to build, or at least personally I tried to build some bridges between the Nisei generation and the older Sanseis. Trying to get people collectively through the organization to realize that there is a shared vision that we need to be able to talk about and work together for, and it was beyond redress. And it had to do with some fundamental issues of human and civil rights, about healing within our communities, it had to do with the same-sex marriage issue, and it had to do with recognition of mixed-race marriage children, formally, and, and also forgiving those who during the war were... I guess, criticized for their stand, constitutional stand and their own rights as Americans to not have to go through the incarceration experience. And those are the people that I truly respected and also understood that without the organization formally apologizing, putting that behind us, there is no way we could move on with all that baggage.

FA: You seemed optimistic in Salt Lake City, you said that the organization was going to make a transition, you're at a crucial juncture right now, and the next step... what happened?

RS: Well, I think, I think my vision was strong and it's still real. I think what it was was that the rest of the people in the organization weren't honest or courageous enough to really follow that vision. Because in their hearts, I think they really know it's gonna be right down the road, but it's hard for people to let go, sometimes, unfortunately, of things that have... that they embrace for whatever reasons, and I think those who, in JACL, who want to stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the contributions or the courageous stand that the dissenters took during the war, it's a measure of their own inability to understand largely what the experience is as a minority in this country, what it is to be a person of color, to remember why we were put in the camps and fundamentally why we fought for redress and reparations. And it all, it's on a continuum with the same stand the dissenters took. And I think that unfortunately, we're in denial as an organization. JACL has been in denial, and that denial is driving out leadership for the future. In a way, it's mortgaging their own, the future for themselves as well as their children and their children's children.

[Interruption]

FA: If the organization is in denial, what is the one thing that it's holding onto?

RS: I think the problem is they're holding onto this, this idea that there is a model minority, that if you make enough money and you can move to the suburbs and buy your Lexus with the twenty grand you got from reparations and redress or whatever -- I'm being a little bit sarcastic -- but that somehow you've bought your rights to being an American in this society and you don't have to deal with it anymore. We should have learned that lesson, that racism is something we deal with every day, without getting overly bitter about the fact that we, that it's out there, is that our children now and children of those who have been affluent enough to move out into the suburbs, into the nice areas, are finding eventually that they're gonna, their children are gonna go through the same experience that they went through. And I think the denial is this idea that, that we bought our, our right to be a citizen during the internment experience and that's behind us. It's not behind us. There's a legacy, and the pain of that experience that's still being played out through the Sansei and the Yonsei generation, and it's still there. And that's why I told the board, I guess, on the last day, I guess it was my only chance to give a little talk about how I really felt, a little lecture. But I did say I hope someday we'll wake up and realize we've been here for four or five generations now, we don't have to be hyper-Americans, we don't have to be anymore. We have the right to be here, but we also have the right of citizenship which is to defend the Constitution, and the rights of all people, not just Japanese Americans. We can't go back to thinking, let's go deal with Japanese issues, which a lot of people were saying, that they were saying the leadership is leading JACL on a treacherous path in the civil rights arena. Well, the reality is that there are, there's, it's a, there's no such word, it's an oxymoron to say "Japanese American issues" in 1996 going into the 21st century. It's Asian Pacific American issues, it's human issues.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 1996, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.