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TI: Can we kind of fast forward to when you started working at the JACL? Is that all volunteer, or did you actually become a staff member of the JACL?

JT: I was a volunteer... well, I was the chair of the National Redress Committee appointed by Clifford Uyeda at the 1978 convention in Salt Lake City. We had come to the convention with these guidelines, and Clifford asked me to take the chair, to run the committee. He had changed -- he changed the committee when Edison Uno passed away in '76. And Clifford changed the whole notion of what redress was all about by calling it redress instead of reparations. And what he did was encompass this idea that redress wasn't just about us and about money, but it was about the injustice. And he shifted the focus that way. Or I guess more accurately, really put the focus on rectifying the wrong, which was really important at that point. And so he asked me in '78 at the convention to take over the chair of the committee, which I did, and I launched the committee out of Salt Lake City at our convention. And my idea was to run it as an educational campaign. Because on the one hand, the American public had no idea this had happened. And before we could do anything in the Congress, we needed to educate the public. We needed them at least to know. And my strategy was, okay, we put it out there and let them fire back and say, "The Japs deserved it," and, "They bombed Pearl Harbor after all," etcetera, and then we would respond. That was the whole strategy that I used. And, in fact, that's exactly what happened. As soon as it hit the press anywhere, I'd have the chapter send me clippings or call... days before the fax, days before the computer. So it was all very slow, but as soon as we'd get the word, I'd start responding. And then I'd go to those cities and do media. And I was doing all of this as a volunteer. And in the meantime, we got a bill in the Congress to seek the commission.

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