JN: So, thank you so much for being here. Just to start off, I want to note that it is May 23, 2026, and it is 11:40 am. And I'm Jennifer Noji, and I'm here with Marielle Tsukamoto. To begin, actually, could you just introduce yourself again, say your full name, when and where you were born?

Marielle Bliss Tsukamoto, born in Sacramento, April 7, 1937. My dad had a farm in a small town called Florin, and my mother is Mary Tsuruko Dakuzaku Tsukamoto, and her side comes from Okinawa. And I'm going to start with my grandmother's story from Okinawa. My grandmother was named Kame Yoshinaga. I can't remember what year she was born, but, you know, probably in the 1870s. And her father -- I don't know his name -- was the Okinawan king's court musician. And he was a favorite of the king, and had been given land, and he had tenant farmers on the land. So he was given some property, and he loved to, he was an amateur sumo wrestler, hurt his back, and was bedridden, but he was also sick, probably had tuberculosis or some kind of disease. My grandmother was the daughter, and there was an older sister, but her mother knew that if she didn't have a son, it really didn't count. So she would take my grandmother and her sister, and they would walk to the shrine in Okinawa every day, and she would pray for a son. Well, she does become pregnant, and she gives birth to a son. The brothers, the uncles, say, "Look at you, you're sick, that's not your son. She went out and got herself pregnant by somebody else, and he doesn't believe that that's his son, and kicks the mother and the baby out. The mother has a newborn infant, she's going to have to work, she can't take the two girls. The eight-year-old cooks and helps take care of her father, and of course he dies. Girls can't inherit, so the uncles get the property. They sell the girls to someplace, they're sent to a different island. There is a cousin that either works for or lives at the castle.

The Okinawan king's kingdom was taken over by a Japanese warlord, I think Satsuma, in the 1300s. So he doesn't have even an army, he only has women and servants in the castle, but he has a crown prince. The servant goes out looking for a relative and finds my grandmother. Probably it took about six months, and she is, you know, like maybe four. Buys her, brings her back. The eight-year-old wisely runs away, probably finds her mother. And so my grandmother is brought back and raised in the castle. When she comes to the castle, all the children are, you know, they play together. She happens to be the same age, almost to the month, of the crown prince, so they were playmates. Tokugawa is the shogun, and the way that they kept control of each little kingdom, which was called the daimyo, they would take the heir, son and heir of the daimyo when they reached sixteen, and they had to be put under the protection of the shogun in the capital city, I think it was Edo at that time, but is now what is Tokyo.

So my grandmother goes with her friend. I thought she was a servant, but she said, no, she wasn't a servant, she was just one of the people that lived in the castle. So, she goes with the crown prince, and when they are sent to Tokyo or Edo at that time, they are required to learn Japanese. Now, remember, in Okinawa, they spoke Okinawan, so she has to learn proper formal Japanese. Everybody that goes there has to do that, and I think she's there for about two years. So when they're, I don't know, seventeen, eighteen, I'm not sure, he contracts either measles or chicken pox or something, and dies, that was not that unusual in those days. And so she brings the body back. The king no longer has an heir, so when he dies, the kingdom of Okinawa will be transferred to Japan.

In those days, when you were about seventeen, sixteen, you were married. She turns eighteen, nineteen, but I guess the king could not bear to let her go, because she was his son's friend and playmate. The servants tell him, "Look, you're ruining her life. She's nineteen, she has to get married." My grandfather's mother was the court weaver, and she was famous for weaving a certain kind of cloth. Okinawa is like, it's a tropical country, and it's hot, and the banana cloth is breathable and very comfortable. One of my mother's former students took me to the National Museum in Tokyo and showed me one of her pieces of weaving that she did. She was that famous. So my great grandmother -- and I can't remember her name -- is in the National Museum. Anyway, she has two sons. It's in the [1890s] and Japan is getting ready for war with Russia. As Okinawans, my grandfather and his brother don't want to be drafted into the army, his mother, the court weaver thinks that if she marries him off, he will be safe, so she arranges for marriage to my grandmother, and the king agrees. It's his court weaver, she's a friend of his son, the one son that he had, so he lets, he agrees to the marriage, but as a royal, he cannot attend a governor's wedding. So he has a special screen made so that he could sit behind the screen and be at the wedding, but nobody would see him.

She gets married to my grandfather, whose name is Dakuzaku, but he's going to get drafted, so he and his brother tell their mother, you know, "We need to go to Hawaii; we don't want to stay in Japan," so they leave. And, you know, my grandmother is pregnant by the time her husband leaves, my grandfather, and she, they leave and go to Hawaii. They were raised not as workers, but as privileged people whose mother was the court weaver. I don't think they were very successful, because they can't stay in Hawaii very long. They probably got fired. [Laughs] They go to San Francisco, and when they get off the ship, somebody meets them and says, "Show us your papers." Well, they hand them their whole bag, this person steals all their money. Now they get, they haven't even hit land yet. They walk off the dock, they have no money. They practically starve, but they learn how to survive.

My grandmother has the baby, and five years later, when the baby is five, my grandfather finally raises enough money to send for them. And he sends the money, but his mother, the mother-in-law, does not give permission for my grandmother and the child to leave. If you know anything about Japanese culture, the mother-in-law has the power to say no. My grandmother even went to fortune tellers to try to get, you know, permission to leave. And finally, her mother-in-law says, "Okay, you can go, but the child stays." So her firstborn is left. My grandmother comes. My grandfather and his brother buy a laundry in San Francisco, it was called Capital Laundry, and a group of young men from Okinawa run the laundry, and they say, "We need a woman." They didn't know how to run the laundry, they didn't know how to cook, and they pointed to my grandfather and said, "You have a wife." They pooled their money and sent money to bring her over, but she can't get permission to bring their child. So she leaves her, lies to her, and says, "I'll come back and get you," knowing it's going to be difficult. She comes, and of course they have children, they never have enough money, and that child is left in Okinawa.

My grandparents start farming in, I think, Fresno. He makes a deal with someone to plant and raise melons in Fresno with the understanding that when the crop is picked, he'll get half, and this was not uncommon. The farmer, my grandfather, picks the crop, takes it to the farmer. He sells it, he gets nothing. He and his brother start a boarding house, and after a while, they moved to Florin where my grandfather's finally able to either borrow or get enough money for some land, and they start farming in Florin, and that's where my mother is raised. She is the third child. There are seven children totally. The last child born is my uncle George. So, you know, there's finally a boy in the family. And they were raised in Florin, farmed grapes and strawberries, and then I think they went there in the 1920s.

And when my mother arrives in Florin in the 1920s, the Florin grammar school is a segregated school, only Japanese children attend that school, and the new school that was built is where everybody else goes. My grandfather's side, on my dad's side, leaves Japan in 1890. He's the ninth child raised by his oldest brother. But, you know, if you're the ninth child, you're not going to get anything, so he and his friends leave around 1890. He ends up, 1890, his name is Kuzo Tsukamoto, and I think Kuzo means "number nine." He was named "Number Nine." [Laughs] Works in the cannery in Vancouver, British Columbia, decides they want to go to America, and they walk across the border.

Now, in 1853, Admiral Perry came to Japan, opened the doors of Japan, and there was, they established diplomatic relations, so people that left Japan had passports, so they come with passports. He ends up working for the railroad in Missoula, Montana, and ends up in Florin about 1905. Gets there before the alien land law, so he's able to buy land for a farm, makes enough money to go back to Japan, and, you know, get married to my grandmother. My grandmother was, I think, very young, seventeen, and she didn't want to come back. But she had a favorite nephew, he was five years old, so my grandfather adopts that boy and brings that boy so that my grandmother would come with him. And then later they have, I think, four children, but that's the story of my grandparents.

My grandfather, my mother, and my dad are raised together, and in 1927, I think, my grandfather and some of his friends, two or three families, start the Methodist Church. Now I've often wondered why, you know, most of the people in Florin, ninety percent, were Buddhists, but a few of them had Christian ties. I think, because in, I think, in the 1400s the black ships from Spain and Portugal started coming to Kyushu, and my grandfather's side comes from the Hiroshima, Kyushu, area. So there must have been some Christian influence, but only ten percent of the people in Florin are Christians. There is a very young couple from the northern part of Japan, Reverend Sasaki and his wife, and they came from aristocracy. But remember, a shogun, the Tokugawa shogunate had the northern part of Japan, and I think if you were on the losing side, a lot of people left. So Reverend Sasaki comes to Florin, his wife, Mrs. Sasaki, went to school with Emperor Hirohito's sister.

JN: Wow.

MT: I know. [Laughs] They came to this small rural poor Florin town, and Florin had among the poorest people. So they come, but you know, they get a classical education. You had two people that had the equivalent of a college education. My mother talks about doing plays, Shakespearean plays. They learn about Japanese history. They're taught culture, poor country bumpkin kids. And my Aunt Ruth, who was the second daughter, my grandfather Dakuzaku came after, you know, the alien land law, so he had to buy the land in her name, and she wants to go to college. The University of California school system had no tuition until 1950-something, so my aunt is able to get a job, work as a servant in a home, and go to college. She graduates with a degree in biology in 19, I don't know, like '34, '35 and in those days, if you were Japanese, even with a college degree, you didn't get a job. So she never gets to use her degree.

My mother, who was, I think, a year or two behind her, was, you know also very bright, and there was a teacher at Elk Grove High School named Mabel Barron. And Mabel Barron was the English and speech teacher, and she told my mother that she gave the best speech, so that she would be the class representative to the speech contest that was run by the Sons and Daughters of the Golden West. Oh, my mother said she was so elated, she was so proud to be selected as the representative of the class, and she said she just felt taller and more proud. Then Mabel comes back with the principal and says, "I'm sorry, Mary. You are not eligible." Sons and daughters of the Golden West would not allow a Japanese American to participate, and my mother was devastated. Mabel was livid, but there was nothing she could do. So she trained my mother to be a speaker and entered her in other contests. That's how my mother became a very skilled teacher. Mabel also said, "You have to go to college," and it was like July, and you know, University of California has a limit, so she couldn't go there. My mother, at about age seventeen, was getting symptoms of rheumatoid arthritis. She goes to, Mabel goes to my grandfather and says, "Mary needs to go to college," and my grandfather says, "No, I already have one in college," my Aunt Ruth. She goes there two or three times and finally wears him down. She then drives to Stockton, which housed the College of the Pacific, which was a Methodist college at that time, and there was a, the Chancellor was named Tully Knoles. And she goes and says, "Oh, Mary, you have to let Mary Dakasaku become a student. She's so bright, she deserves this." And Tully says, "You know, all the scholarships are gone, we can't afford it." She went back so frequently that Tully finally gives in, and Mabel thinks that maybe he put up the money himself. Mabel finds her a place to live with the school doctor, and my mother starts school. She gets a job as the custodian of the science building, but in two years her arthritis has gotten so bad, and there's no treatment, she has to quit. She comes back to Florin, marries my dad, I'm born in 1937.

I think she comes back in 1935 and by the, when Pearl Harbor occurs, my parents are active in the Japanese American Citizens League, the Florin Chapter. My mother is the secretary, and she's very kind and very caring, and she realizes that there are people in the community who can't read the signs. We never got letters, they just put up posters. We were supposed to read the posters that were on telephone poles and in buildings. Mrs. Kimura lived a couple of miles down the road. Her two sons had grown and moved out of the house. She was a widow, and she has a severely disabled child who is in his twenties, but the size of a small child. He has to be diapered, he can't walk, she carries him on her back. He has no speech, he has to be fed by hand. And she takes him out to the field, picks strawberries, and sells that to make her living. My mother gets a notice saying that disabled people will not be allowed� in the camps, and she has to go let Mrs. Kimura know because she's trying to get things together, get ready to move out in two weeks, and there's not only a curfew, but a limit as to how far you could go. You could not go more than nine miles away from your home. And she notifies Mrs. Kimura, and then a week later she hears something terrible happened to Mrs. Kimura. They lived just a half a mile from the house. So, my mom goes over there. She's in tears. She gives her this paper, and it says, you know, "This is an official order, so and so cannot be going to camp." And she said a white van came, and there were three people in white uniforms, a driver and two orderlies. They ripped that child out of her arms, put him in a straitjacket, put him on the back of the van, and took off and shoved this paper in her hand. She was just hysterical and crying. My mother read the paper, and it said he couldn't go to camp, and that he would be housed at the Stockton insane asylum, which was the hospital, which was 40 miles from her house. That meant she couldn't go there. My mother tried several times to get permission, but the offices were closed.

We had to leave, and Mrs. Kimura went... you know, every community was divided into fourths. One-fourth went to, you know, different places. Well, she went to the same assembly center as we did, but she was on a different car in the train, so my mother lost track of her. And I know that she got somebody to try to help her to see her son, but I don't think she ever got permission. And when we, we were sent to Fresno Assembly Center in May, and when we -- the camp in Jerome was the last one to be completed, so we were sent there in October. And a couple of months, I think, in February or March, Mrs. Kimura got a letter saying he had died. Of course, he only knew his mother, he only knew the food that she prepared for him, he had no language. Can you imagine? Must have been, I don't know, terrible for him. Isn't that a terrible story?

JN: Heartbreaking.

MT: My mother wrote a diary and kept notes, and in 1987 she published a book. She had, in the '70s, she retired in 1974 and she started working on that book. I had hired somebody that was a typist, pages and pages, and she was trying to get it published. And she met a fellow educator, Elizabeth Pinkerton. Elizabeth took the manuscript because she was a writer. And she said, "Mary, you have a thousand pages here, and nobody's going to read it." So Elizabeth Pinkerton cut her book down to about 280 pages. My mother listed her as the

co-author, and that's the book I, you know, brought here, and have been selling. It's called We the People: A Story of Internment.

And my mother became interested in redress, and she would... one of the things that you do when you're trying to pass a bill, you write to your congressman and your state senate, you know, Senator. And so she would mimeograph letters that, we'd go to the Hiroshima Kenjinkai, we'd go to JACL events, we go to Buddhist and Christian church events, and she'd sit there with the table, and they were pre-mimeograph letters. All you had to do was fill in the name of the congressman, put in your name and address, and then Florin JACL would mail them, so they didn't have to mail it. And she did thousands of letters. There were duplicates, but that didn't matter. I mean, you could do more than one letter. So she was very active in redress, and some people were reluctant. They said, "Oh, you know, it's over. Let's not make waves. We're finally..." we're talking by the late 7'0s, right? 1978, 1979, "Oh, we're finally getting accepted into society, we don't want to make waves." But she insisted and got other people in Florin JACL to support this.

The other thing is, it was the year of the bicentennial, and she got appointed to some committee that was going to do some activities in Sacramento, and met Mayor Anne Rudin, a woman mayor of Sacramento. And she tells Anne Rudin about the story of internment, and she gets her on her side. There was a county supervisor named Illa Collin, whose daughter married a Japanese American. And Isla, when she heard, when people were sent into internment camps, you work for the state of California, if you work for the county, you got fired. Well, Isla was livid, and she said, "I want to find out the names of the people that Sacramento County fired, and I think we should offer them some kind of rebate," you know. So she got the county superintendents to authorize the money. Well, they couldn't find people. Most people did not come back, they got married, they changed their name. The addresses were no longer accurate, but she had it written in such a way that they couldn't get the money back into the treasury and use it for something else. So she commissioned an artist, and they put up a mural and put it up in the county building. So now the story was visible to everybody that came to the Sacramento County office building, that was Illa Collin.

So we had Illa Collin on our side, and the whole idea in the 1970s, nobody knew about redress. And it wasn't until Senator Inouye, you know, Norman Mineta was trying to get redress passed. And luckily Hawaii became a state, you had Patsy Takemoto Mink, who was a congresswoman, and I can't remember who the other congressperson was from Hawaii, but might have been Daniel Inouye. Anyway, you had some people that were Japanese Americans, and Daniel Inouye was in the 100th. So you had some support. Finally, JACL, National JACL was reluctant at first, but I can't remember. I think it was in the 1970s when they had a national convention in Sacramento, and Jerry Enomoto was the national president, National JACL finally agreed to support redress, so Florin Chapter was one of the early ones that supported redress. And by 1987 it looked like maybe it would pass. There were a lot of people that went to Congress to lobby.

You have to have money, you have to have money to send people, and one of the things that National JACL did was, I can't remember the amount, but Jerry Enomoto was put in charge of some fund and they raised money. JACL could not be a lobbying unit; it was a civil rights organization, so they had to separate it, and they called it the Legacy Fund. I think there must be a record of that in Densho. So they were sending veterans and using that legacy fund money.

By 1987, 1986... I can't remember the year, but Saul, he was a curator of the Army Museum in the Presidio, and he put up an exhibit about the 442. We were about to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the signing of the Constitution, or the 200th anniversary. The president, or the director of the Smithsonian Institution, I think his name was Gerald Kennedy -- check that out -- heard about this and thought, "This is a wonderful exhibit. I want to put that up in commemoration of the loss of constitutional rights." And when he did some research, he found out, oh my gosh, the parents of these boys were in concentration camps in the United States. That is a bigger story; he wanted that story. So he sends out archivists, and there were messages sent out to all the JACL chapters. Look, they're looking for items to put in the exhibit. Well, my mother heard about it, and she got all the farmers who still had things in their farms to bring things to the Florin Buddhist gymnasium. And when the archivist came, they had these things to pick from, and other churches and other communities did that, and that's how they put that exhibit together. My mother was asked to do an interview and tell what she remembered, and whatever it was, they used her comments both at the opening of the exhibit, at the end of the exhibit, and a room where you could ask people questions. So she was used in the collection. It was a very comprehensive collection. It had the immigration history, it had the story of farming and Japanese towns, and there was even a special section about the 442 and the 100th and the MIS. So it took up quite a bit of space, and it was there eighteen years and then was taken down. And I guess when the Smithsonian Institution, which is a private institution, not connected with Congress, makes a decision, they don't have to notify anyone. When Norman Mineta found out about it, he was very unhappy, incensed, really. So, 1987, eighteen years, you do the math, I can't do the math, so, A More Perfect Union was taken down.

JN: Wow, yeah. Do you know who conducted that interview with your mother?

MT: I know. My mother's story is really interesting, because as a teacher she retired in, I think, 1974, you know, and was writing the book. And I can't remember what year, but Christine Umeda, Satsuki Ina, Georgette Imura, and I don't know who else, were young parents, and they realized that they didn't know that much about the culture. Because, you know, the Nisei parents didn't share that much about Japanese culture, we didn't want to be Japanese, and they decided they would start a summer school, they called it Jan Ken Po Gakko, and I can't remember what year, but they started that in the '70s. I don't know who was the director of the first summer program, just a summer program, but I think by the third year they hired my mother, and she started, she developed a curriculum that included Japanese food, Japanese culture, Japanese history. And then one of the kids said, when she talked about the camps, she said that he said, "Oh, I didn't know Grandpa was in prison." And the connotation... and she understood that the child thought he'd done something wrong. That's when she knew she had to inform the next generation. We were innocent, we were victims of racism and government policy.

So by 1983 she wanted to put, she wanted to teach teachers about it, and she knew the superintendent. She worked in Elk Grove, which is a small school district south of Sacramento, she made charts and went to the boardroom, announced, you know, through the mail that she would be available for teachers. For two years she spent a week there, two weeks, nobody came. In 1980 -- and she must have done this in 1982. In 1983 or 1984... 1983, there was a new superintendent, Robert Trigg. And he saw her and he said, "What are you doing, Mary?" And she said, "Oh, you know, I want to talk about what happened to us." And she tells him, he said, "Oh my gosh, I didn't know this. I want to invite you to talk about this at the board meeting." So she goes to the board meeting, and there are two board members that knew about it. One was somebody from Florin, can't think of her name right now, but the other one was Kay Albiani, who had gone to high school with some of the kids that were in camp, and she knew about it. They proposed to the board that they pass a resolution supporting this program, and that it be introduced when the Constitution was introduced to fifth graders. So, from 1983, every board member that has served in the Elk Grove Unified School District has voted to support this program. When Bob Trigg was superintendent, he bought classroom sets for the elementary schools. He provided -- and my mother would go to the district office and put up her charts and things. He provided the bus to take the kids from their school to the board room and back. So during the time he was superintendent and my mother was still alive, they did that.

My mother died in 1998, and nobody knew how to fill her spot. Christine Umeda, who was very active in Jan Ken Po Gakko, the school that my mother, you know, was teaching, directing in the summer, and insisted that we continue. And I said, "Christine, who knows enough about the information?" She said, "Well, we'll get a veteran to do the veterans part, we'll get somebody else to do this." There were three or four of us that took turns speaking each part, and the school district was growing, there wasn't enough room. And the other thing that my mother was able to get was there was a contractor named Ted Kubata who made a model of a barrack. And he made it in modular form so the walls came apart, and it would occupy maybe one-fourth of this room. Bob Trigg allowed him to bring that into the board room, cleared the board room, and Ted and his friends would bring it in, and they'd put it up for the two week period, and then they'd come and take it down, and we would have a program over at the Buddhist gym.

By the 1970s it was important to get community support, and so the Florin JACL held events called the Time of Remembrance programs. JACL chapters were encouraged to do this, we weren't the only ones. Everybody was supposed to do that in their community to get the support of the population that lived in these states, so that we could influence Congress to pass the redress bill. And my mother would invite, you know, and pretty soon we were getting almost all of the county supervisors, we're getting people from the city, we're getting newspaper support. There was a publisher by the name of Roy Herburger in Elk Grove, he came from, I think, a Midwestern state, but moved to Elk Grove in the 1950s. He met my mother, and he couldn't believe the stories, but as a newspaper publisher, he started printing stories about what happened to the Japanese farmers. We were sent to concentration camps, internment camps, and how it was unconstitutional. He had people who were his subscribers, as well as people that were advertisers, he lost more than half of his income.

JN: Wow.

MT: But he refused to stop publishing these stories as people from other parts of the country and the Bay Area moved in, Elk Grove was a very conservative area, mostly white farmers whose ancestors were settlers. So the population was changing, but Roy almost... and he didn't stop, he continued, but I know that he had a hard time. So we had people that were willing to risk their business for something they believed in, and when you think of it, that probably happened in other communities where the people who really understood what it meant helped, and helped us publicize it, so we were able to pass redress.

JN: That's really amazing that he was able to support in that way. And I'm curious, were you involved in redress at all? I know you would have been younger.

MT: Well, you know, I would help my mother with... in those days, it wasn't an automatic mimeograph machine, it was this big thing, you had put ink on this drum, and you turned the crank.

JN: And were you turning it?

MT: We did thousands of pages. You know, my cousins and I, my aunt, you know, everybody helped, and JACL paid for the stamps, mailed it. But in those days, I don't think stamps were as expensive as they are now.

JN: You were helping as well.

MT: Well, I was, I was not doing what my... and my mother was speaking to groups. She was a very good speaker, so she would go around, speak to different groups to get people on board, and, you know, some people were reluctant because they said, "Look, we're getting accepted, let's not make waves," and when Daniel Inouye suggested that we have a commission, and it was under the Carter administration that they authorized the commission, that went around, and you know, I think three hundred people ended up testifying, and they had media, news media, and television coverage. All of a sudden, the people in the United States said, "I didn't know that." And it was really sending veterans and the record of the 442 that really helped. But Norm, I lived in San Jose. That's where -- I became a teacher, too, and I taught in San Jose for twenty-four years, and Norman was my congressman. And he would tell me all kinds of stories about how they were able to do everything they could to get Ronald Reagan to vote, you know, to sign it. And one of the stories I heard, there was a veteran by the name of Kaz Masuda who died, and he sent a letter saying to his parents, "If something happens to me, I want to be buried at home." And so the family, I think, owned a nursery, but I believe they lost it. Tried to buy a plot in this town, look him up, Kaz Masuda. You've got records of that. Anyway, the town council said, "We're not going to allow a Jap to be buried in our cemetery." And somebody in Hollywood heard about that, and� they made a big ruckus, got publicized in the national news media, and the town recanted. So the son... and the family was able to raise the money, they brought the body back. And when a soldier is brought back to the family, the military sends an escort, and the escort was First Lieutenant Ronald Reagan.

JN: Wow.

MT: And he, you know, he's an actor, not a speech writer. He said something about, you know, when a soldier's blood is spilled on the sand, everybody's blood is red, or something to that, it was some kind of quote like that. Someone remembered that and helped his sister -- who was still alive in 1987 -- to write a letter to Reagan asking him to support this bill. The GOP was saying, "Don't sign it. If you sign it, the Indians, I mean, the Native Americans, the Blacks, everybody's going to ask for redress." Remember the letter or the... Rachel Maddow recently did a program called Burn Order. It's called Burn Order because the order was to burn all records that could prove that we were innocent to begin with, and it was General John DeWitt, I think, kept that one letter. Anyway, I think Norman told me this. The Justice Department sent Reagan a memo: if you accepted redress, you couldn't sue the government. They said, "Sign it." There were some people -- and I think there were a few people in Southern California that had a lawsuit -- check that out. So there was a lawsuit that was that was getting ready to be introduced because they didn't think redress would pass. If you took redress money, you couldn't participate in the lawsuit. So that's one of the records, you know, stories I heard.

The other one, the VFW was having its national convention in Washington, D.C. There were a lot of veterans serving in Congress, and there was a resolution that was to be introduced at this national convention condemning the redress bill and saying that it was, it would be a blight on military, on the military, if it was introduced, it would pass. Somebody knew the guy who was going to be, who is the president, and they agreed to have, you know, meet with him at some golf course to play golf together. They told him all about the record of the 442, what the parents had suffered, and he said, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it." The resolution was introduced. He put it last on the agenda, and if they voted, it was going to pass, everybody knew that. And so he gets up and he closes the meeting before the last agenda item comes up. He says, "This convention is closed," and he hands the gavel to the next guy. He will not let them go to vote. All these stories, and I know they did other things.

Somebody was supposed to ride with Reagan, and talk to him, and we don't understand how hard it is to pass a bill. Look at all the things that go on. You have at Densho a recording by Rudy Tokiwa, and I've heard it a couple of times, and I've used it, you know, for students. And he visits, I think, somebody from Florida that is a Republican, he's assigned to vote -- you know, when you pass a bill, you have those in favor, those against, those in favor, those against. And he is the Republican who is going to speak last against the bill. So Rudy and somebody else go to his office, and they're going to try to convince him not to speak. And he comes in, he sees them sitting there, and Rudy was injured, and he wore two crutches, you know, the kind you put on your arm. And he said, "What are you guys doing here? You know I'm not going to vote for your goddamn bill. Get out of here." The other guy gets up and goes, Rudy just sits there. And then after a while, he says, "Congressman, I knew you were wounded in the war, and it must hurt like hell. But you get up every morning, come to the office, and you serve the people of the United States. I want to thank you for your service, The guy's just standing there, and Rudy gets up and walks out. Rudy tells the story. On the day of the vote, Rudy and his friend are sitting in the balcony and watching what's happening. The Speaker of the House, what was his name? The Speaker of the House makes an excuse and assigns Norman Mineta to be his temporary chair. Norman gets to handle the bill, introduces the bill... for, against, for, against. Now it's this congressman's turn to speak against the bill. Gets up out of his seat, he goes to the front, and he stops. And Rudy and his friend are looking and watching him, and then he turns and leaves. He doesn't speak against the bill, and they couldn't believe it. And they're watching the vote: green, yes, red, no, and this guy's name comes up, it's green, he voted for it.

JN: Wow.

MT: But Rudy, somebody should look that up, Rudy Tokiwa.

JN: It just shows the power of those personal connections.

MT: So redress was passed, and I think it was the record of the soldiers and the sacrifices they made.

JN: And a whole lot of community organizing.

MT: Yeah.

JN: Wow, thanks for sharing that.

MT: I think that's a good place to stop. Then you know, if you want, I'll share some more about what my mother did and what we're doing at the museum, but I think this is a good place to cut off for now.

JN: Perfect. Well, thank you so much, Marielle.