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PT: In 1981, when there was a commission hearings around the country as a predecessor of the redress bill itself, I talked to my Issei, immigrant father and I said, "Pop, you've got to tell your story about being in the camps, and what it what it meant to be here at Heart Mountain." And he wrote a two-page essay in which he said in partly, he said, "There were a bunch of young people who came to me who said they were members of the Fair Play Committee, and they said, 'We want to hold a meeting in your block, but the present block manager will not chair it, and would you do it for me?'" He said, "Yes, I'll be glad to do that." And at that meeting, he stood up and told the crowd there, he said, "I'm an Issei, an immigrant, ineligible for citizenship, an alien. However, I've gone to your schools and I graduated from high school and spent one year at USC and I learned about the Constitution and why there was a rebellion in this country against European rule, and these people here are here to talk about the Constitution, and I want you to listen to them." And that was my father, a story in 1981.

And that was my first realization that even though I was interned here, there was a group that stood up for conscience and the Constitution and their country, and that was when I first became involved within the Japanese American Citizens League to do something about the resisters of conscience and the Fair Play Committee.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 1995, 2005 Frank Abe and Densho. All Rights Reserved.