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TI: So tell me what the hearings did for you. When they started in the various cities, were you able to attend any of them, or what was it like?

NM: I did, and it was just very, very moving. But you know, as we were putting together this commission bill, I wanted to make sure that we had prominent members of the Congress as... you know, if I dropped the bill in, people would say, "Oh, that's self-serving. Mineta's an internee, of course." So I didn't want us to be in the forefront on this thing. So I wanted to make sure that we had judiciary committee members who were going to be, who were going to be considering this bill in committee to be co-sponsors. And so we went through this whole thing very extensively. And then I would call on various people to talk to them on a one-on-one basis about being a co-sponsor. And I went to this one congressman, a fellow by the name of Tom Kindness from Ohio, a member of the judiciary committee. "It's nice to have you here, Norm, what do you have for me?" So I tell him I've got this bill, and it has to do with forming a commission, go back through the whole issue of evacuation and internment. He sort of looked off in the distance and he says, "Yeah, I remember hearing about it. In fact, my old boss somehow was involved in that." I said, "Really?" I said, "What did you do?" He said, "Well, I was in the General Counsel's office at International Paper Company in Ohio. But our Washington, our senior vice president of government affairs was headquartered in Washington, and I think he had something to do with it." I said, "Really?" I said, "What was his name?" And he said, "Karl Bendetsen." And I go, I thought to myself, "Oh, crap. Here's the guy who engineered the evacuation and was the SOB who put us in camp." So I just folded up my papers and I said, "Tom, thank you very much for the time," and I walked out of there. And Glen and I were walking out, and we go, oh man. You talk about doing research and know who you're talking to about stuff, but we, boy, we didn't know a thing about it. But when, as soon as he said, "Karl Bendetsen," I go, oh man, and just folded up my papers and I said, "Thank you, Tom," and walked out of there. I figured, "I'll never get him as a co-sponsor." But we did that; we just went, I just went to member after member. Bob Matsui did the same thing, going to members and getting them to sign up as a co-sponsor of the commission bill.

TI: Well, and an important one was Jim Wright, also. Can you talk about that?

NM: Jim Wright was at that time the majority leader, and -- no, I'm sorry, he was whip at the time. And so I went to ask him and he was a fighter pilot in the South Pacific, and he came home on leave in 1944, and then he heard about the camps and the Japanese Americans in the camps and all that. And he said he thought to himself, "That's not what I was fighting for in the South Pacific," and he said at that time that at some point he wanted to do something to correct that wrong. He said, "That's not right." So when I got elected to Congress, I got elected to the Public Works and Transportation Committee, Jim Wright, congressman from Texas was on the Public Works and Transportation Committee. And we got to talking a lot, and got to be good friends, and then he got elected to go up in the leadership. So on this bill, I went back to him and I said, "Jim, I really need your help." And then he told me about the "Lost Battalion" and how the 442nd/100th had lost a lot of blood to, to get the rescue of the "(Lost) Battalion." He said, "Absolutely, put me on the bill." And I said, "I'm not going to put you on the bill. I need you as the lead sponsor," and he said, "Fine, put me as the lead sponsor." So to have the number three in the Democratic leadership as the lead sponsor on the bill was a big boost. So you'd go and say, "Jim Wright's on this bill," especially with the southern members. So when, after the bill was passed and the commission was formed, and they had these national hearings across the country, I don't know how many hearings they had, maybe twenty, twenty-five.

TI: Yeah, I want to go back to, so after you, you had Jim Wright agree to that, what kind of reaction, how did you feel when you decided to do that? That must have been a really important moment.

NM: Well, it was just great. Jim said he would sign on the bill, so just thanked him profusely, shook his hand, Glen and I walked out of his office, we didn't say a thing. And just kept walking, turned the corner, we got into the elevator, and we got into the elevator and going, "Yes! We got Jim Wright as the sponsor of the bill!" And we were just sitting there inside the elevator by ourselves hugging and thinking, "Jim Wright is on the bill with us." It was really a big moment for us.

TI: Because at that point, did you start getting confidence that this was going to really happen?

NM: Well, it's one of those things you do to take things one step at a time. And so there were 435 members of Congress, you want to get to as many as 218, the majority members, and on the commission bill, I think by the time we dropped it in, I think we probably had 120... before we dropped the bill into the legislative hopper, we probably had 125, 150 co-sponsors on the bill. Because I really wanted to make it with a big bang, and not just, you know, a lot of times you drop a bill in with five co-sponsors or seven, whatever, but this one was something that we really had to make a big impact, so I wanted to make sure we got as many co-sponsors on the bill as possible.

TI: Were there any other key congressmen during that time that played a role, like a Barney Frank?

NM: No, that was long before Barney came on board. So, and then we had a lot of opposition, Dan Lundgren from California and Sam Hall from Texas. I said, "Sam, Jim Wright's on this bill." "So?" "Oh, okay," and walked away.

TI: Now, when you say they opposed, did they actively oppose? Were they doing things to stop it?

NM: Some of them, I've forgotten who it was. Somebody wrote -- I've forgotten who it was now -- but wrote a, we have this mechanism called "Dear Colleague," where you just write a "Dear Colleague" letter and send it to everybody, all 435 members of Congress. And we had someone write a "Dear Colleague," and "There's a bill being circulated about forming a commission, this is a waste of taxpayer money, this happened in '42," on and on and on. And it, I suppose, had some gravitas with somebody, but those, we were looking at trying to get co-sponsors from those who we felt were sympathetic to the possibility of getting them as a co-sponsor on the bill, and there are probably, you know, 150 people you'll never get no matter what you do, so those you just sort of discount. So people like, who write "Dear Colleagues," that appeals to them because it gives them a little more ammunition in their own quiver as to why they're in opposition to the bill.

TI: And meanwhile, everyone else is really focusing on that middle hundred-plus people that they're the ones who will really make the difference.

NM: Right.

TI: So what year was this dropped in the hopper? We're talking about...

NM: Let's see. We did that in, I think, '79. Seventy-eight was the resolution passed by the JACL, '79 we did the research, and then in '80 we got the bill passed. And the commission report came back in '82, and Jodie Bernstein did a tremendous job as chair of that commission. And the general counsel for that commission... oh, shoot. Not Hugh McDermott. He was just tremendous.

TI: I interviewed him, I'm blanking on his name, too.

NM: Yeah, but he was, he was just an amazing guy. But he and Jodie were really the ones who made it happen. And you know, then the final commission report, it came out and said that there was a "gross violation of the constitutional rights of people of Japanese ancestry." And it said that the... that redress, an apology and a redress payment, they recommended $20,000 should be made, and that the reason the evacuation and internment occurred was because of historical racial discrimination, wartime hysteria, and weak political leadership. And so it really, it just, it brought everything together, all the loose ends. And it dealt with the "magic cable" issue, I mean, it just, when people were saying, "Well, what about those 'magic cables'?" then you could hold up the report and say, "Well they studied that issue, and it was a lot of nonsense." And so it really was tremendous.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright ©2008 Densho and the Japanese American National Museum. All Rights Reserved.