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RP: And during this whole process, you were able to sort of network with other railroad families and learn more of these, sort of, horrific stories.

FS: Well, it was interesting because Ida and I had not seen each other since she got married in the early '50s. And here she lived in Rocklin, and I lived in Sacramento. But Patty Wada had called me and said Ida Otani wanted to come to San Francisco for our meeting, but did not have transportation. So I called her and told her, "If you come to Sacramento, we would love to have you go to San Francisco with us." And it was almost forty years since we had seen each other. So it was really wonderful, and we've gotten together, we got together this last September again. She's an old family friend, here we were. And when she got married, I hadn't seen her. She left Reno, and it took the reparations to bring us back together, so that was nice.

RP: There was another court ruling that I came over in reading Andy's thesis. There was a Kawaguchi case, do you recall that one?

FS: I remember... is that the one where the railroad, they wouldn't let her out of her house, the section house, and it was, there were guards at the door? So she did get reparations before we did, on the basis that she was locked up in the railroad section house. And I believe there was a Chinese woman at the grocery store that would deliver groceries to her, because they weren't allowed to leave. And there was an FBI agent stationed at her door.

RP: This was at Ruth?

FS: No, I don't remember which town she lived in, yeah. But she did receive her reparations. And we were saying if one railroad worker gets it, we should all get it. And I still feel that way. All those who were refused reparations, I feel they should get it. You know, some were refused because they weren't living with their family, they were going to school in another state, and they were refused. But Ida Otani was also going to school in another state, and she received her reparations. So I don't understand why some of us received and some of us did not. Somebody said, oh, the travel restriction was brought out in a court case, that they weren't allowed to travel. And they said, well, if that's the case, every Japanese person in the United States should get reparations. And the judge says, "What's wrong with that?" [Laughs] But they still lost the case.

RP: You also mentioned that about the curfew. Can you share with us about it?

FS: Yes. I was at the Smithsonian listening to Gordon Hirabayashi's tape, and as I was pushing various buttons, I heard him say that the U.S. court ruled that the loss of curfew was the loss of civil liberties. So I brought this up to De De Greene from ORA, and I mentioned that if this was the case, if this was true, was loss of civil liberties, every Japanese person who lived under the curfew should receive reparations. She told me she would send a worker over there to listen to the tapes, but they never got back to me on that. And we had received our reparations, and they closed their office and I never heard about what happened after that. But if this is the case, I think we all deserve reparations.

RP: So the ORA closed their office shortly after...

FS: The 1998 deadline, sunset. And we were only given five, five and a half months to find all the railroad and mining workers. SO I think there's a lot of people out there, if they don't subscribe to the Japanese vernaculars, they probably didn't know about it. Although Brendan Riley from the Associated Press in Carson City did some articles on me. He did an article for the local newspaper about my story. And then he, his boss liked the story, so wanted him to go nationwide. So he called me back, and we continued with more information, and it went out nationwide. So if they didn't see that, they probably didn't apply for reparations. And we tried to find as many as we could. It's interesting because Kenji Taguma got an award for the New Year's article he printed on me, for the International Foreign Newspaper award. And then Brendan Riley got one for the Associated Press award with my story. So that kind of makes me feel good. [Laughs]

RP: Fumie, you mentioned that you had sort of limited success in, for recruiting at JACL. You mentioned Patty Wada was very instrumental. But what about the national JACL organization --

FS: National JACL was working, but I was kind of disappointed because they never contacted me. Even when we were up there together, they worked on their own. They didn't work with me, or they didn't ask me to work with them. So this is when they told me that the reparations looked like it was only going to be for railroad workers, I was very upset. And Bob Matsui was telling me he was contacting one of the JACL members in Sacramento, his office. But I wished they had contacted me personally about what was going on, and getting, helping us out. So Patty organized all the railroad workers in San Francisco for a meeting, and it was very interesting because we all went in there, and, not surprisingly at all, most of us were from Nevada. Because anybody living in California already had reparations whether they were railroad workers or otherwise, 'cause they were interned. But I remember walking in, and this one man said, "You said you're from Nevada." I said, "Yeah." He says, "Do you know where such and such town is?" And I said, "Oh, yes, right by Elko," and he said, "Right." We had never met each other, but there were many, many people from different parts of Nevada. There were people from Caliente, Nevada, who were mine workers. I didn't even know there were Japanese workers living, Japanese families living in Caliente, 'cause it's a very, very small town right outside of Las Vegas. But they were mining workers.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2008 Manzanar National Historic Site and Densho. All Rights Reserved.