<Begin Segment 8>

TI: Okay, so a day and a half you go through this, talking about three options, and you're trying to steer or manage it to a conclusion of the commission.

JT: Yeah. What happened was, I didn't want any outside influence. So I said, as I convened the meeting, Mike Masaoka was there, Kazuo Shiki, who was a chief of staff for Katzenmeyer, very, very liberal member of the House, and a few others. And the, of course, the staff heads, and Clifford. So as I convened the meeting, I called it to order, I said, "Here are the ground rules for this meeting. Only committee members will be allowed to speak, and only when I call on them." And I'm going to allow debate for a day and a half or something like that." We started on Friday, debated all day Saturday. And I said that, "By the end of Saturday, I'm going to bring this to a vote." And the guys sitting on the side, Mike Masaoka and Shiki, and these others who had a lot of Washington experience were really miffed at me because I wouldn't let them participate. I didn't want them to participate. It wasn't their meeting. You know, what they thought -- they could try to lobby the members later at dinner or whatever. But I was going to conduct this as a very, very tight meeting. I wouldn't even let Ikejiri or Nobuyuki speak. And I, every now and then, I would call on Clifford. He was the national president.

And so I brought it to a vote. I'll be really honest with you -- I've never talked about this publicly. But I arranged the seating to ensure that I would get the vote that I wanted. I had three people I knew -- and I'm going to get killed for this, I know -- I had three people I knew would vote for the commission. Well, that I thought. I was sure that Min Yasui would, I was sure that Bill Marutani would, I kind of hoped that Phil Shigekuni would vote for the commission. Phil was this very gentle guy, really a great thinker, out of Los Angeles, the San Fernando valley. And I had asked him to be on the committee because he was a real activist down in L.A. Part of EO 9066, Inc. from the very beginning, so he had a long history of redress. I thought he would be inclined to support whatever the Nikkei members were suggesting. And then I had Ray Okamura, who I was sure would just reject this idea. And then the two Seattle members, who I knew absolutely were against the commission. So I arranged the seating so I would get the first three votes from... and I took a chance and put -- and it's the only time I ever put name cards at a meeting. I put Phil first, and then Marutani and then Min, and then Okamura after Min. My thinking was I'd get a split vote, and I would have to cast the deciding vote, which was okay. But when I brought it to the vote, I said to the committee, after a day and a half of really tense meeting, I said that I was going to allow them to make a statement for the record, because this is going to be an historic vote. It was going to change the course of Japanese America. And so I let them each make a statement as they cast their votes. And the common theme among the three first votes was that, "We don't like this idea. I don't, my heart isn't with a commission. It's gonna take too long, Issei are gonna die, we're gonna see this stretch out, and we have no control," etcetera. But given the political realities of Washington, they had to vote for the commission. Phil and then Bill and then Min, and then it went to Ray. And Ray just totally trashed the idea of a commission. And then he said the most amazing thing. He said, "But given the realities of Washington," I thought, "Oh, my God, he's going to vote for a commission strategy," which he did. And so we, we had the votes.

TI: So you had the votes even before you voted?

JT: Yeah, I didn't have to vote anymore. I thought I was gonna have to cast the vote that would push it to the strategy for the commission.

TI: And you think that by arranging the progression of the votes, you would possibly influence the others, and that's what happened. So you wanted to have -- I want to understand this. So those guys who were in favor of the commission voted first, and people heard their statements. And your thinking was that would influence the others.

JT: Yeah. I was hoping for a unanimous decision, because this was going to be a very, very tough and very unpopular decision. I knew that. It was going to be extremely controversial. And I kept thinking, "Okay, 1942, JACL sold the community out. In 1979, we're doing the same thing again." But you know, in all honesty, we had absolutely no choice. We had to go with the Commission. There was no way we could do anything else. We could have voted for a money bill, and Dan Inouye would have said, "Fine, I'll do what I can," Sparky would have done what he could, Norm would have tried, Bob would have -- Bob was a freshman, he had no influence. But it would have been killed. It would have been absolutely dead in the water, and I knew that. And so I felt a real commitment to trying to get the strategy they were suggesting as the only feasible way we could reach that point where we would have a money bill in the Congress, and it was this commission. So I called Inouye and Mineta the next Monday, told them what the vote was, and said I was recommending this to the national board.

TI: And what was the final vote? Was it unanimous?

JT: No, not at all. It was four to two.

TI: And the two Seattle were...

JT: Seattle voted against, yeah, the two guys. And you know, at that point, they knew their votes were meaningless. You know, to be really honest, I felt really sad for them. I felt sorry that they were put in a really bad situation, and that they couldn't embrace what this was going to be. And I thought, well, okay, but this is what we have to do.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2008 Densho. All Rights Reserved.