Densho Digital Archive - Clifford Uyeda Interview (denshovh-uclifford-01-0003)

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FC: Who was Bill Hosokawa?

CU: Bill Hosokawa is, possibly he is a spokesperson for the JACL, and a journalist. He was in Denver, he was possibly one of the leaders of the JACL during the early period and later. And so my experience in JACL was almost minimal. I became a president only because of their desire to have someone to start the redress campaign. So after the workshop, that was, it was at that convention -- in fact, it was the very first convention that I ever attended, the national convention, that is, as a full-time. One time before, in 1934, two years before, I attended the Sacramento convention, but it was only to protest certain thing. The protest was because JACL national board had refused to take up the issue of honoring Iva Toguri and Wayne Collins, and they would not bring up the issue. Every time I asked them, "What happened to the board's decision?" they said, "Well, we didn't have time so we didn't bring it up." That went on for, for almost a year. And because of that, I finally picked up the phone and called Sugiyama, I think, who was the president at that time. And he said, "What, why don't you come over to the convention and bring it up?" So I went to the convention and brought it up, and within twenty minutes they said okay. So we can have Wayne Collins over there at the convention to accept any award for Iva Toguri, so we had Midwest regional director accept it for Iva, who also knew Iva, and another person to accept for Wayne Collins.

FC: What was Hosokawa's stand on redress?

CU: Well, I... well, I think he supported -- publicly, they all supported the redress because at the convention, we did pass a proposal that we worked on. The proposal we worked on was that $25,000 per individual and a large trust fund. As you know, one of the big things that split the JACL was whether the redress should be individual redress or as a trust fund. We felt, we felt that we should go for both. There should be, since it was individuals who suffered, individuals should get a redress, but at the same time, the community was also devastated, so we felt that there should be a community fund as well. So we went for both.