Densho Digital Archive - John Tateishi Interview (denshovh-tjohn-01-0006)

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TI: So let's talk about that. Because right after the 1978 convention, or at the convention, there was a resolution passed to do a legislative strategy.

JT: Right.

TI: And as part of that, you were, you and others from the JACL went to Washington, D.C., to meet with Senator Inouye and Spark Matsunaga, Bob Matsui and Norm Mineta.

JT: Right.

TI: Talk about that meeting. Describe what happened at the meeting. Who with the JACL was there? Talk about that.

JT: What happened was my committee -- the problem with the JACL Redress Committee is it never met. I mean, Clifford brought people together. One of the key people under Clifford was Peggy Nagai. She was a lot of the intellectual thinking, along with Clifford, to what resulted in a book that they did, booklet, called The Japanese American Incarceration: A Case for Redress. And there was a guy named Raymond Okamura from Berkeley who had drafted the resolution that Edison introduced in 1970. So they had set the stage for this whole effort. And, but the committees never met. I mean, that was one of the failings of the redress program from year to year to year to year. And then I took it over, I had five thousand dollars on my budget for two years. And so I thought, "The hell with this. I'm going to use it all up at the beginning and bring in" -- I'm sorry, I had ten thousand, five thousand each year -- "bring in the committee." And I appointed the committee, brought two Seattle people onto the committee, Ron Mamiya, who was a young attorney at the time, and Henry Miyatake, who was a redress activist and really a good thinker. Hard to get along with, hard to deal with, but I had a lot of respect for Henry. And then Min Yasui. Min and Henry hated each other's guts, and they let it be known in meetings. But, you know, I thought I needed both of them. Phil Shigekuni, and Ray Okamura. I was really criticized for not having a representative committee with people from each district, eight districts. I wasn't interested in democracy at this point, I wanted people who were activists and who could get something done. And later, I brought Bill Marutani onto the committee. But first, we met as a committee, we talked about what our direction should be. And the Seattle guys, Henry and Ron, really were advocates for the "bootstrap plan," the tax write-off. Most of us didn't like it. I really didn't like the plan. I thought, "You know, people aren't going to know anything about this. I mean, come on, let's get real." And ten thousand bucks, that to me was... we were slapping ourselves in the face. And you know, it was a really well thought out plan that they had, it just, I thought the method and the amount was wrong. But other than that, I thought it was great what they did. So we met and we talked about it, they advocated bootstrap, and I advocated the twenty-five, the guidelines, twenty-five thousand dollars, an apology, and a trust fund of three billion dollars. That this would serve as a perpetual trust for scholars, for people who want to do, do projects, etcetera.

And so we were talking about all this, and Phil Shigekuni was the one who asked the question: "Gee, maybe we should talk to the JA members of Congress, because they may not like either plan." So I called our Washington Rep. and I said, "I need a meeting." Clifford Uyeda went to that meeting, Karl Nobuyuki, who was the national director at the time, Ron Ikejiri, who was our Washington Rep., and Ron Mamiya. I wanted the Seattle Plan to be presented. I wanted, I really wanted a fair shot at that. And if was gonna get rejected, then they could live with that, I thought, and me.