Densho Digital Archive - Norman Mineta Interview (denshovh-mnorman-01-0008)

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TI: So I know there are a lot of people that, that really worked hard to pass it. Because of time, maybe you could just share one or two stories about some of the people who helped pass the bill.

NM: Oh, man, there are just... you know, one thing about, you know, there are a lot of countries that call themselves democracies, but the thing that makes the democracy of the United States so distinctive from any other in the country -- in the world, is that it requires citizen participation. And so there were just, I mean, this was really a bottoms-up grassroots effort. Here's something that impacted on 123,000 people back in 1942, out of a population of 200 million people. Who cares? Forget it. But yet this thing kept on bubbling up because working at the grassroots level all across the country. And so there were just a lot of people. I remember from Seattle, Mrs. Kinoshita, Cherry Kinoshita, being one of those who was always agitating for citizen groups to get involved in this thing. And frankly, there were some of these groups that, who were also lambasting me for taking the legislative approach. Bill Hohri just ripped me a, ripped me a new one, and he thought I was a sellout. Well, he thought my brother-in-law, Mike Masaoka, was a sellout. That he said, he said, "He's the one who put us in camp." Give me a break. And so, I mean, we were having to swim against the tide, too, within the community. And some of the, frankly, awful things that Bill Hohri said about JACL, Mike Masaoka, George Inagaki, Dr. Tom Yatabe, Mas Sato, all these, and against those of us in the Congress who were pushing the legislative approach, it was not a, it was not a -- even for people like Cherry Kinoshita and people, there was a citizen group in San Jose that was outside some of these other groups, they were having to speak in opposition to what other Nisei groups were doing. But, so it's hard to point out individuals. As we were, after we had passed the bill, and the Senate had passed the bill, and there was some talk about President Reagan vetoing the bill. And there was a fellow by the name of Grant...

TI: Ujifusa.

NM: Ujifusa, and Grant was an editor with the Reader's Digest. And we were talking about this, and I said, "You know, Grant, we're not over the hill yet on this thing." And he said, "Well, you know, Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey is going to be with President Reagan, and he's going to be in the car with him for about an hour. Suppose we brief Governor Kean about this bill and have him talk to President Reagan about it, and not veto the bill?" So I said that would be great, so we pulled all that material together, and Grant went to see Governor Kean and convinced him that in this conversation when he's in the President's car, that he should talk to President Reagan about it, so we did that. Also, remember, when President Reagan was Captain Reagan, he was there when, when, was it Sergeant Masuda, couldn't be buried in his own hometown cemetery. And so Captain Reagan was at the burial of captain, I mean, of Sergeant Masuda even though it wasn't in his hometown grave. Wherever he got buried, Captain Reagan was there. So we had someone else remind the President of that occurrence. And in fact, I think there's a picture of him at that cemetery, or at the funeral service, and they even gave him a picture of that to remind him. But it was really Governor Kean who talked to President Reagan about why he shouldn't veto this bill.