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TI: So, I'm going to jump ahead now, and actually switch topics, but I wanted to ask you, when was the first time you heard about the topic of redress for Japanese Americans?

NM: I suppose there had been talk about it... you know, Edison Uno had been talking about redress for quite a while, and there was a lot of conversation about redress. But it wasn't until the Salt Lake City convention of the Japanese American Citizens League in 1978, when the national convention adopted a one-sentence resolution that said that "to undertake a legislative program seeking an apology and redress payment of $25,000 per individual evacuated and interned during World War II," and that was it. And that was adopted at that Salt Lake City convention.

TI: And were you at that convention?

NM: I was at the convention. I did not participate in any of the discussion, and people would say, "Well, what do you think? You think we can get this passed?" And I'd say, "I don't know. I mean, that's a real long shot. I'm not sure we'll ever accomplish this." But I never got into the discussion on the floor of the convention. I wasn't a convention delegate, I was there really more as an observer.

TI: And so what were you thinking? Because you must have thought, "Okay, so this is going to fall into my lap pretty soon." I mean, they're talking about legislative action, you're in Congress so it was going to happen. What are you thinking?

NM: [Pantomimes hanging himself]. And it wasn't until about September, I don't recall when. September/October of '78, the officers of the JACL came back to meet with Senator Inouye, Senator Matsunaga, Congressman Matsui and myself. And Bob had been elected to Congress in '76; this is '78. So when we all assembled, I remember the first thing I said was, "Komatta ne?" which is, "Boy, we're in deep straights here." What do we do with this? And so we had some real good conversations about it, and Senator Inouye said, "You know, we're not gonna get this passed until the American people know what happened. And once they know, then they will talk to their representatives and their senators and they will then get an idea about what went on. But until we get the public knowledgeable about this, we'll get nowhere on this issue." And he said, "There was the Warren Commission about the Kennedy assassination, and those commission reports, the hearings went on for a long time, they were on the news every night, they issued the Warren Commission report, that was on the news a lot, the commission report itself became a bestseller." He says, "That's what we've got to do." And then he was talking about the Kent State killings, and I've forgotten the name of that commission, but he talked about that commission and he said, "Unless we get the hot focus of publicity on evacuation and internment, we're not going to get anywhere." And so Spark Matsunaga said, "Well, I've got this Native Hawaiian Claims Act bill, and maybe we can use that as a basis for this commission." And I had a legislative director, brilliant young kid by the name of Glen Roberts, and his brother, Steve Roberts was a reporter for the New York Times. And Steve's wife is Cokie Roberts with CBS. And so anyway, Glen was sitting in on this meeting, and so he took Sparky's bill on Native Hawaiian Claims and then converted that to what became the Commission on Wartime (Relocation and Internment) of Civilians. And the commission bill passed and the commission was formed with President -- not Truman, Carter appointing the commissioners. And they set out to work on it. The life of the commission under the original bill I believe was one year, and we had to extend it to make it two years. And then I think it was either '81, I think was '81 or maybe '82 when the commission report came back.

TI: And so Norm, I want to go back, and so after the decision was made to pursue the commission path, when you would go back to San Jose, what would people say to you about that decision? Was that a controversial decision?

NM: It wasn't, it was probably more benign. It was probably not so much controversial as it was, "That's nice you're doing it," and that was it. Because people just didn't think it was going to go anywhere, it was a mission impossible. And you had a lot of people who, I mean, core people who were very much in favor of pursuing this action, and so they were all hepped up, but I would say ninety percent could, could care less. And maybe twenty percent were really, "This happened in '42, why are you bringing this up now? Let's let it die, forget it." But that was a small group, maybe not even twenty percent.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.