<Begin Segment 10>

RP: I'd like to get an overall, sort of, picture of the progression of the events that took place leading up to the railroad and mine redress. How... first of all, were you involved at all in the larger redress effort?

FS: No, because --

RP: It didn't affect you, right?

FS: No, because we weren't interned. And I really didn't know that much about it. And so when they were going for redress, it was only for the internment people.

RP: But it gave you a hope that you could achieve similar results for your father and other railroad workers.

FS: Right. So once we got this through, Florin JACL had offered me help, when I was trying to help the Latin American Peruvians get redress, and they had paid for my trip to Washington. And then Andy Noguchi asked me if I would be on the Civil Rights Committee with him. So this is when I joined JACL.

RP: And this is before you actually began initiating efforts...

FS: Well, this is after the fact, after we had gotten redress, that I joined Florin JACL, and I've become a strong spokesperson for civil rights.

RP: So you, you put in a claim for your father, I think it was, what, 1990 when you first began the process?

FS: I put it in for myself and my sisters and brothers. My parents were not qualified because they were not alive in 1988, they had both passed away. So this was something I had to do for my sisters and brothers. So we did all get reparations. The sad part about it is there were a lot of people who did not get the reparations. I don't know what the reasoning is, they told me I qualified under a number of things. But a lot of people have been turned down on reparations because they did not move. I didn't move either, and I brought this out to ORA, that I received reparations without moving, and why haven't all these other people gotten reparations? And the only excuse they gave me was that I qualified under a number of different areas. But people who lived within certain areas of, a certain distance from the railroad, there was a prohibited area, and I think they should have been qualified also. There were people in Reno who were living a block from the railroad tracks, and I think you had to be within so many feet, and it was prohibited area. And according to that, I think they would have qualified. But ORA didn't send them papers to the family, they sent 'em, papers for the father, because the father had been arrested for having a shotgun, and not turning over the shotgun to the government. And they received reparations for the father, but not for themselves. There were other families in Nebraska who were denied reparations, railroad workers. And I don't understand it. The Latin Peruvians are going for reparations, and we've got different bills going through. I think with some of that, they're still trying to get reparations for the Japanese Americans who were not given the reparations. So there's a small possibility we can still get reparations for the railroad workers and other Japanese Americans.

RP: So there's still an active...

FS: There's still, Javier Beceria has got a couple of bills before Congress right now, and they're waiting for the right timing to present the bills. But there's a number of Republican and Democrats who have signed on to support the bill.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.