<Begin Segment 18>

KL: This is my last real question, and it's another big one, and it's for both of you if you care to it. It's what are your thoughts on how things like the United Farm Workers and other activities of the modern Civil Rights Movement affected things like the struggle for redress and Japanese American activism and other activism in the years after the 1960s? How do you think that the movement of the '60s has impacted redress and other struggles currently? Do you think it changed things, people's thinking?

MJT: Well, I think the younger generation, the generation now that has followed my generation, that was the one that spoke out for the redress because they felt that we were too passive, that we didn't protest the incarceration, and so we were more passive than active. We were too... I don't know what the exact word is, but we weren't active enough against the incarceration and so on. And so the redress was a forum to try to bring that to surface, to recognize that situation in American history. My own personal response to that was that they wanted redress and reparation of money. There was a push to have money and to make up for some of the losses that the Japanese and Japanese Americans endured during this time, and there were losses. But in America it's so easy to think that you can buy your forgiveness. "Oh, well, just give them some money and they'll forget about it." And American way is to buy your way. And when the, President Bush, that's the older Bush, signed, after Reagan, signed the reparation and apology, I think that was adequate. But because we just don't stop there, you continue to work for what is right and what is just in society, in the place you live. So I wasn't always favorably received because of that opinion. But I felt that if the government apologized and was sincere about the apology, they should be satisfied and move on. But the younger people felt that there was needed, more to be evident about their forgiveness, that would be talking in terms of dollars. So that's my general thought about that.

MT: We did both accept our check, put it into...

MJT: A trust fund.

MT: A nest egg for our old age, and probably that amount of money and a little bit more is what our children will inherit. But that was the way we used our, put that away.

MJT: The ones that really deserved to have that reparation would have been my mother and father. Most of that generation had died, but they're the ones who really suffered through this whole ordeal of incarceration and Manzanar and so on. They're the ones who lost a lot, struggled a lot through their own belief in what is right, and they, as far as monetary rewards were concerned, were not to receive anything in terms of that, because they were not here to receive it. Although there were those would say, yes, there are a few of us that are left, and that's true. But so many folks, the older folks, really deserve, if there was going to be a reparation, really deserved that reparation, it was my mother and father and their mother and father as far as generations go. But that's past history, but the tragedy of human life is that we keep repeating the tragedies of life. But every time I we repeat them, we pray that we will grow a little bit, not to do it again. So hard to learn.

KL: I lived in Boston for a year, and I can remember one of the city council people who was a veteran, he was a generation and a half older than me, and there was a person who was probably eighteen or so in the audience who raised his hand, and his question basically was, "What do we do in the face of injustice? What do we do?" and I do think that's our responsibility to today. I think it's a good question. How do we learn and how do we share?

MJT: Well, I think you learn by getting the story out and getting the truth out, talking to one another about it so that you know what to do, when to recognize what has gone awry, and to see if there's any way you can make truth prevail.

MT: And not take freedoms for granted. We mustn't just take our freedom for... be vigilant and right wrongs, because they go on all the time.

<End Segment 18> - Copyright © 2012 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.