Densho Digital Archive - Fumie I. Shimada Interview

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RP: This is an oral history for the Manzanar National Historic Site, and today we're talking with Fumiko Shimada. The interview is taking place at the United Methodist Church in Sacramento, California, the gymnasium of the church. The date of the interview is October 17, 2008. Our interviewer is Richard Potashin and our videographer is Kirk Peterson. We'll be discussing Mrs. Shimada's experiences and those of her family during World War II with specific emphasis on the firing of her father from his railroad job and the effort that led up to eventual redress for railroad and mine workers in 1998. Our interview will be cataloged at the Manzanar National Historic Site library. And Fumie, do I have your permission to proceed with our interview?

FS: Yes.

RP: Thank you so much for sharing some time with us on a very special topic, one that's sort of been hidden sort of in the bushes for a while. But first of all, can you give us a little background on your family, starting with yourself? And the date of birth and where you were born?

FS: I was born in Sparks, Nevada, the tenth of ten children, of only which six survived. I had three brothers and there were three girls in the family. I was born July 7 of 1939. I was delivered at home by a doctor, and I was a two-pound baby, a premature baby, along with my oldest brother. And four of the babies that were deceased were all premature babies. My mother and father came from Japan. My father worked for Southern Pacific Railroad, and my mother was a housewife until the war, when she had to go to work to help support the family when my father was fired. My grandparents settled in Utah, and my father was living in Utah and then he went to Japan and brought my mother back in Utah, and then he was offered a job with the railroad if he would move to Sparks. So my grandfather was a masseuse, and he used to give massages to the railroad bosses. And, of course, he couldn't accept money because he wasn't licensed in the United States, so they asked him how they could pay him back, and he says, "If you'll give my son a job." So they said, "Well, if he'll move to Sparks, we can make it work for the railroad." Well, at the time he came, there was a Wildcat strike going on with the railroad. And so he was living in the machine shop, he never left the building, because of the Wildcat strike going outside. And then he called my -- he wrote my uncle, and he said, "If you want a job, I can get you a job with the railroad." So my uncle also moved to Sparks, and my mother was pregnant with my oldest brother, so she had to stay behind until she had the baby, and then she joined my father in Sparks. But my uncle and father lived in the railroad building, in the machine shop, duration of the Wildcat strike.

RP: And how long did that strike last?

FS: I'm not sure. But at the time, verbally, the bosses said, "If you work for us during the strike, we'll guarantee you a lifetime employment. Of course, that was an oral agreement, during 1944 -- excuse me, 1942, he was fired from the railroad. So it didn't have any bearing on him. But after the war, his boss came and asked him to return to work, so he went to work the next day. So it was a government firing.

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RP: Just to backtrack a little, can you give me your mother's and father's names?

FS: My father was Kametaro Ishii, and my mother is Tane Ishii.

RP: Can you spell both of those for us?

FS: Kametaro is K-A-M-E-T-A-R-O, and my mother was Tane, T-A-N-E.

RP: Where did, where did your parents hail from in Japan?

FS: They came from Wakayama-ken, Japan. Arita-gun and Arita-shi, Japan.

RP: And did they have intentions of coming to America and making money and perhaps buying land in Japan and returning there?

FS: Right. My mother, when my father came to Japan to find a wife, they had set my mother up with him. And she asked her aunt what she should do, and she said, "I think, since you're a daughter, you don't inherit any land. So I think you should go to America, make your fortune, come back and buy your property." So they came to America to make their fortune, but of course, with ten, having given birth to ten children and the firing during the war, it just never happened. They had their own property. During the war, we had our house, and we lived in Nevada. During the war, when my father was fired, no one else wanted to hire a Japanese. So my brother went to work after hours in a grocery store, because they didn't want him to work during the day, 'cause they didn't want anybody of Japanese ancestry on the floor to discourage customers. My sister went to cosmetology school, and they gave her a state license at the age of seventeen instead of eighteen, based on hardship. So she also went to work. She'd go to high school, and then after class, she'd go and work 'til midnight. So my sister and brother were really the prime support of the family during the war. My father did odd jobs working for different places, and then eventually he took on a gardening job with the owner of the Nevada Nursery. And the Nevada Nursery would give him the customers, and he'd go out and do the gardening during the summer. Of course, during the winter it would snow, so there was no gardening in Nevada.

RP: If you can give your siblings that you mentioned, names, so we know who... maybe in order of age.

FS: Of birth? Okay, my brother was born in Utah, and his name was Hanichi, H-A-N-I-C-H-I. And he came to Sparks. When he was two years old, my grandparents were going to go back to Japan, and my mother asked them to stay because she'd given birth to the second child who had passed away. And so she was pregnant with her third child, and they said that she needed help with the children. And my grandmother said, "Well, we'll stay if you'll allow us to take the oldest son back to Japan when we go." So they stayed, and my mother gave birth to Hanroku, H-A-N-R-O-K-U, and my grandparents left with my brother when he was two. He never came back to the United States. But in 1980, 1979, my mother went back and visited him. And then in 1980, my older sister and I went back. My sister and brother were born right next to the railroad property, and my sister's Masako, M-A-S-A-K-O. And when she was a newborn, the first month of life, the house that they were living in caught on fire, so they had to find a residence. And there was one family that took my mother and the two children in, but they wouldn't take my father and uncle. So my father and uncle (rented an) apartment, at the time, and then when they got stabilized, they brought the property on C Street. And they bought a small house at the time, and that's where we lived all our life. Okay, and then the next brother was Hiroshi, H-I-R-O-S-H-I, and during the war, he used to raise rabbits to sell to the Italian market. And then my mother raised chickens, of course, she raised turkeys, they had a lamb. We did everything, we lived off the land. And then my sister Toshiko was born, T-O-S-H-I-K-O, and then I was the next one, F-U-M-I-K-O. In between, we had four, three brothers and a sister who passed away.

RP: Fumie, tell us a little bit about your dad, and you mentioned in our pre-interview that both your mom and dad were not traditional in the sense that they didn't see specific gender roles for you and encourage you to be independent and strong.

FS: Right.

RP: How did that relationship develop from your early childhood?

FS: Well, my dad was, I guess, the stronger of the two parents, the disciplinarian. And I remember when I got my driver's license. He told me if I wanted to drive the pickup, which we owned, I would have to rotate the tires on the truck. I think it was a ploy that he needed the tires rotated, but I had to go out to prove to him that I could change the tires on the pickup before I could take the car, because he said he didn't want me calling late at night saying I had a flat tire. He wanted me to be able to change the tire. So I did, I even had to change a flat tire on the truck before he would let me drive the pickup around town. Now, this is something my sisters and brothers didn't have to do, but I had to do it to get permission to use his car. But he always wanted us to be survivors, and he said that in the event anything happened to our husbands, he wanted us to be able to provide for ourselves. So he really encouraged us to have some kind of background. So my oldest brother was a watch repairman, my sister, two sisters were beauticians, and I was the only one that went to college. My other brother was a vice president for United California Bank. So we were all, had jobs so we could support ourselves if anything happened. And I was the only child that went to college, and I had a teaching credential. So I was kind of set in life.

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RP: How long had your father worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad before the, the firing occurred?

FS: He went to work about 1922, so he was probably working about twenty, twenty-two years with the railroad when he was fired.

RP: Can you describe the relationship between, that developed between him and his bosses? I guess he, like most Issei guys, started out as a section hand, or did he step right into a more skilled position?

FS: He worked as a apprentice for a machinist, and then he eventually became a machinist for the railroad. So he worked in the machine shop making parts for the train and repairing the trains, and this is the same thing my uncle did.

RP: How were they treated by, by the company for those twenty years?

FS: They were, there was a very good employer. They did not discriminate. When my father was fired and we were going for reparations, I contacted the railroad company in San Francisco and they told me it was not a railroad firing because they did not discriminate against their workers. This letter was not accepted by ORA, Office of Redress Administration, because it was fifty years after the fact, and they wanted some kind of a note or papers indicating that he was fired, before they would accept us for reparations. Whereas there was no such thing because the FBI was very careful not to leave a paper trail. And it was only because of Andy Russell, who had gone to the museum in Ely, Nevada, railroad museum, and found these papers, so we were able to get reparations. I went back, amazingly, to the Ely Railroad Museum to look for these papers myself, and they couldn't find them. So Andy really did us a favor by having found those papers. And then I understand that the president of the railroad company had read about us in the papers, and how I found these papers. And he was going to do a book, and he couldn't find the papers in the museum either, so they contacted Andy Russell to get his copies. So we were very fortunate that Andy had found these in the museum.

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RP: Can you discuss a little the circumstances surrounding your father's firing from the railroad, and what were the long-, the short- and long-term implications on the family?

FS: Okay. My father's boss was Herbert Covington, and he was an assemblyman -- Tex Covington was his nickname -- assemblyman for the State of Nevada. When my father was ordered to be fired, he went to the governor, Carville, of Nevada, and asked him, "Please, do not fire this man. He has five children and a wife to support, and I will personally pledge the safety with him on the job. And the governor says, "It's out of my hands, it's a presidential order." And I don't know what he meant by "presidential order," but this is why Michi Weglyn suggested that I look for the paperwork on this. And I went to the museum, the library, in Carson. I think we made three or four trips there to look for different papers, and we couldn't find it. And during that time, somebody suggested I go to the museum, which I knew wouldn't have the papers. But they told me to go to the UNR and look for the papers, and that's where we found Andy Russell's thesis that had the paperwork that we needed.

RP: Based on that research, how did the FBI influence the railroads in terms of firing employees like your father?

FS: Okay. During the research, I was looking at all the newspapers during the era of 1941 through 1944. There were FBI agents all over Nevada. In fact, there were FBI schools at the time. Our house was raided by the FBI without a search permit, and I asked ORA if this was an infringement of my civil liberties. And they said no, because under the alien land law -- under the Alien Act, they could do this, 'cause it was my father's house. And, of course, they didn't find anything because we had to surrender all the hunting rifles, binoculars, and cameras and this type of thing to the government. I remember my dad did keep the shortwave radio, and every night he would plug it in because he did not read English. He couldn't get the Japanese vernaculars anymore, and the only way you could hear the news was to listen to the shortwave radio. So every night, he would hook it up and then he'd take it out and hide it. And then plug in the next day into the radio. We were allowed to keep our radio, but not the shortwave. But he had removed it when the FBI had come.

KP: Quick question there. He was listening to the broadcasts from Japan at that time?

FS: Yes, the shortwave radio. And this is the only way they could hear the news. Because they didn't understand English when it was on the radio, and they couldn't read the papers. So the shortwave was the only way they could keep up with the news. It was illegal, but he did do it. [Laughs]

RP: An act of resistance.

FS: Another thing, we weren't allowed to be on railroad property. We couldn't cross the railroad tracks. But in order to go shopping in Reno in the department stores, we had to cross the railroad tracks. And I guess they allowed that at the time, because it was on the other side of town. But as far as visiting, when we had the curfew, my parents could no longer visit friends in the evening. My sisters and brothers were not allowed to go to the football games, basketball games, or dances in the evening because of the curfew.

RP: How did the curfew affect their work? You said that your brother worked at night. How did you get around some of those restrictions?

FS: He would take the back roads to work. Because if he was caught, he could be jailed for breaking the curfew. My sister worked in the arcade in Reno because the dealers would come in and have their hair done, and she would work 'til midnight. The taxi driver would pick her up in the alley, she would sit on the floor of the car in the backseat of the taxi, he would drive her home, drop her off, and leave through the alley. And this is a ritual he did every night for her. And otherwise, she was breaking curfew, it was illegal also. But it (was) support, and it was a thing we had to do.

RP: It's an amazing story. We're not talking about the West Coast, we're talking about Reno, which was very close to the exclusion area. What was the impact on your father as far as his spirit, his independent will?

FS: It had a great psychological effect. In fact, he contemplated suicide at one point, and he wanted to take me and himself into the mountains, kill me, and commit suicide. Because we were the two mouths to feed that could not contribute to the family. And, of course, my parents, my mother and my sisters and brothers talked him out of this, but he went through a very, very low self esteem and suicidal tendencies, right. It was a blow, because he was the breadwinner, and all of a sudden, my mother was working for the Italian farmers pulling weeds in the onion field. And my brother and sister were working to help support the family. My mother was raising chickens to sell the eggs, and my brother was raising the rabbits to sell to the butcher store. And, of course, when the chickens got too old to lay eggs, we had 'em for dinner. We didn't, we couldn't go fishing or hunting, and that was a big support of our family before. And it was very, very hard. We did have our property, we had to pay the taxes, there was very little money coming in. So we asked to be interned in the camps, and they refused us because we were not on the West Coast. Which I think is saying something. [Laughs] Everybody else was interned, my aunt and uncle were interned in Tule Lake. We did make a visit there because my uncle was ill. My dad sent my two brothers, my sister and I, and my mother to visit them. And we had to get a permit to travel to Tule Lake. I remember being pulled over by a police officer, we had to show our paperwork. When we were leaving Tule Lake, my uncle looked at the car and said, "Those tires are not going to make it back to Reno." And my mother says, "Well, what do we do?" because the tires were being rationed during the war, and they didn't have money to buy tires. So he says, "Well, go to sleep and don't worry about it." So when we woke up in the morning and we were ready to leave camp, we had four different tires on our car. But we were not allowed to ask where we got the tires. We just left. And I'm sure it must have come from a military jeep or something, because the Japanese did not own cars in camp.

RP: Right. And you were allowed to travel without escort to Tule Lake? You mentioned that you were pulled over that one time.

FS: Right.

RP: You drove by yourself to Tule Lake?

FS: To Tule Lake, right. Now, I know a lot of people who were leaving California and traveling through Nevada to get to a different destination, were pulled over by the police, investigated, and escorted to the city limits to make sure they left our community.

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RP: Talk about Art Imagire's situation where there were a number of people who did, in order to leave the exclusion zone, took that opportunity and went through the "voluntary relocation" process, ended up in Reno. Do you remember folks coming from the West Coast like Art's family?

FS: Uh-huh. We had, not a lot, but we had a few other people who did move to Reno. We had a friend who moved from French Camp in Stockton, Lodi area, to farm in Fallon, Nevada, which is about thirty miles east of Sparks. It was interesting because when the family pulled into the railroad station, they were picketing because they didn't want the Japanese to come and raise, buy farm property and compete with them. So they were picketing that they didn't want the Japanese to come to Fallon. The family did not read English, so when the father got off the train, he looked at his wife and said, "Look, somebody important must be on that train because they're welcoming them here with a parade." [Laughs] And he did not know at the time that it was a picket for him not to come to Fallon. But he raised the Heart of Gold cantaloupes and sent 'em all over the United States. And Fallon is known now for the Heart of Gold melons that the Japanese farmers started there.

RP: Were there other railroad workers like your father who were summarily fired from their jobs in Sparks?

FS: Yes, there was one other Japanese family. The son was working for the railroad, and he did get his reparations, he was living in Hawaii. There was a family from Gerlach, Nevada, the father was a section worker, and they moved to Reno also.

RP: I'm trying to remember their name. You probably know...

FS: Nishiguchi.

RP: Nishiguchi.

FS: Right.

RP: And that was a very amazing situation. Basically, the Nishiguchis were told to just leave Gerlach and not come back.

FS: Right. And I think somebody rented them a very small trailer.

RP: Right out in the middle of nowhere.

FS: Right, out past Pyramid Lake in the middle of nowhere. It's a small railroad town. And they lived in an old trailer, mattress, I think a double bed mattress practically filled the trailer. They moved there with one daughter, and a daughter, married daughter came back from Tennessee and rented a place for the other children to live so they (could) go to school in town. But the parents were not allowed (...). The son was in the military, and he had his uniform (on), and he came to Reno and tried to get a hotel room so he could help his parents. And the man looked at him and said, "We don't allow Japs to stay here." And he remembers throwing an ashtray at the man and leaving. He did go to the parents, and I think when he knocked on the door, the parents were frantic and he had to whisper who he was before they would open the door for him. But here he was in uniform, and they would not allow him to have a room in Reno.

RP: There was a mention in Andy's thesis that this sort of plotline formed part of a movie called Bad Day at Black Rock. It was based on their experiences as Japanese Americans. I don't know if you had seen that movie.

FS: No, haven't seen it.

RP: We'll try to get you a copy. Spencer Tracy and a number of other, sort of, notable actors of the time starred in it. It has this plotline dealing with a railroad town.

FS: Okay. Now, they have a daughter, Ida Otani, who lives in Loomis. And she was helping us to receive reparations also.

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KP: Can I just ask you a quick question about, again, getting back to the railroad and the firing. You said that you were, people of Japanese ancestry were forbidden from railroad property. But I know in your father's [inaudible] and your uncle, they did not live on railroad property. But people who lived and worked for the railroad, and lived in railroad housing, they would have been evicted.

FS: They were all evicted. The Nishiguchi family, the father was a section foreman, and he lived in a section house and he was evicted from there. And so he, somebody loaned them a trailer to live in the desert. And...

RP: So he was evicted from Gerlach.

FS: Right, from the town.

KP: So was this, this happened nationwide?

FS: It just happened on the West Coast. I don't know if the, the railroaders from, I know, Nebraska and different, Utah, were all fired. But I don't know if they were fired on the East Coast or not, but they were all fired in the Midwest.

KP: And I also heard a story from a Laguna Indian who said that there was a Japanese community in Gallup that had worked on the railroad, and they were picked up, lock stock and barrel, and sent to Poston.

FS: Uh-huh, yeah. They were all -- and it's ironic, because they were all to be fired on the same day. My uncle was ill the day of the firing. The boss from the next shift came to the house and fired him in his sickbed. So it had to be a government firing because all the railroads happened to fire on the same day. And they denied this, that the FBI were all over Nevada. So I think this is partly what gave us the edge.

RP: Right. And your father's firing took place in February, '42?

FS: February 19, 1942.

RP: Before that time, there was tragic consequences of the firings at McGill and Ruth.

FS: Right.

RP: Dealing with the mine workers.

FS: And those were private railroad companies. They were mining railroad companies that were fired there. They were afraid of the Japanese doing sabotage on the railroad tracks. Because at the time, a lot of military, military people and also equipment were being shipped by the railroad, and they didn't want the Japanese to sabotage the rail lines. They didn't want them working in the mines because they would handle dynamite, and the white workers were afraid that the Japanese would set the mines off on them. So that's why the railroad and mining worked together. But it was the Nevada Railway that Andy Russell found the paperwork for. And the attorney had gone to the meeting with the FBI agents present, and got the information, and documented it in a letter to the president of the railroad company. And these are the papers that were found in the museum.

RP: And many of those mine workers from Ruth, I guess, were interned eventually, too, many of the Isseis were sent to internment camps in other parts of the country?

FS: Gee, I really don't know about that.

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FS: I know they had to get permission to leave Ely, and a lot of them went to Utah to look for work. Because the government didn't want the Japanese to scatter, they wanted to know where they were at all times. So they had to have permits to leave different towns, so they can keep an eye on it, all the railroad workers who were leaving. In Nebraska, there were many that were fired. One section worker had pulled the stakes out of the railroad tracks because this is how he was taught to repair the railroad tracks. There was a military train due in, and as he was repairing the tracks as he did at any other time, the railroad bosses noticed that it was not the correct way to do it, and they thought he was sabotaging the line because the military train was coming through. So they fired him immediately on the spot. He went to live in a rooming house, a boarding house in Nebraska where another railroad family was also staying. He committed suicide by hanging himself at the rooming house thinking that all the railroad workers were fired because of what he had done. So because of the shame and the disgrace, he did hang himself. It was very, very sad, because that was not the reasoning for the firings.

RP: Can you share with us that, how you used that story in your, sort of, final push to influence ORA?

FS: There was another railroad worker's daughter that went to Washington, D.C., with me. And she happened to be staying in the rooming house at the time that this man hung himself. So as we were making our presentations to Bill Lann Lee and ORA, she brought up this story. And everybody gasped because I think it was a well-known fact that this man had been fired, but no one knew what happened to him afterwards. So when she told the story, I noticed that De De Greene, who was in charge of ORA at the time, just gasped. She couldn't believe it, she was in shock. And it was, it was a very tragic story. A lot of the railroad workers were not married because some of 'em were still going to Japan to get wives. But there was a certain period there where there was an exclusion act and the Japanese were not allowed to come to the United States. So we had a lot of bachelor men who were working for the railroad at the time. We don't know the exact number. I think Western Pacific -- no, excuse me, Union Pacific fired before February. So that was a railroad firing, but it was with the encouragement of the FBI. They had to get the clearing from the government to fire the workers. So it was still... the railroad company is kind of controlled by the government, because it's transportation. So they had to go through the government to do this firing.

RP: So essentially, they were, like many people in agencies, were victims of war hysteria.

FS: Uh-huh.

RP: The hysteria associated with sabotage, Hoover's paranoia, strong paranoia about that, influencing the president and also...

FS: Well, I remember when my father was fired, he was told not to set foot on railroad property or he would be jailed. We weren't allowed in any buildings, railroad tracks, bridges, or anything to do with railroad property at the time.

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RP: Fumie, you mentioned the tragic story of this gentleman, I think his last name was Yata, the gentleman who pulled up the stakes?

FS: Oh, I'm not familiar with his name.

RP: How about your own personal story regarding your father and his, his desire to end his life? Did you share that story with the ORA folks, and how difficult was that for you to kind of confront that?

FS: I grew up afraid of my father my entire life, and I didn't know why. And I think as I was writing all the papers for reparations -- we went to a meeting that ORA had in Sacramento, because somebody had told my sister, "You should check into it to see if you qualify." And we said, "We don't qualify because we weren't interned." And they said, "Well, go to the meeting and talk to the people." So Bob Bratt was in charge at the time, and he told us it was a unique story and that we should pursue it. And we thought, "Oh, this is going to be easy, we just fill out papers and we'll get our reparations and our apology." It wasn't that easy. It was an eight-and-a-half year ongoing battle for us to get reparations. Every time we sent in some kind of requirement, they would ask for more, and we'd have to keep digging and keep digging. And I realized during this, it was repressed memory because I had forgotten about the suicide. I think it was something I had just wiped out of my memory. But as I was typing all this paperwork for ORA, I broke down and started crying, and I realized why I was afraid of my father. Because he did threaten to kill me during the war. But he was very, very close to my husband, and I think it was after we were married that I resumed a normal relationship with my father. But I never knew why I was afraid of him all my life. But it, it did a little bit to everybody. I think we all are scarred by the internment, by the firing, by the hysteria. Now, living in Sparks, I did not see too much prejudice 'cause I was only three and a half at the time. And the people we connected with were close friends of my father, and Sparks is a very small town. So we did get called "Japs" and different things by people who didn't know us. But the general public was very, very kind to us during that time.

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RP: You told us that your father was rehired?

FS: Yes.

RP: When that happen? After the war ended?

FS: The day they signed the peace treaty, my boss, my dad's boss came to the door and said, "Ishii, will you please come back to work tomorrow?" And he says... he had told us when my father died, he was helping us with the funeral arrangements, and he was telling us then the hardest thing he ever had to do in his life was to fire my father. But it was a government firing, it wasn't a Southern Pacific firing, and he couldn't do anything to stop the firing. But he did make the appeal to the governor. And these are the papers I was looking for in Carson City. Michi Weglyn had asked me to go and look through the archives to see if I could find even a scrawled message, and we couldn't find it. But when we found these, it was papers of that era, so I asked them, would they accept it. Would they give us reparations, or would they tell us, no, it wasn't Southern Pacific papers that we found. And they said at this point, they would have to accept it from any railroad. And I asked him if it would just be for the workers, or would it be for families. And at that time, De De Greene said, "Fumi, we would have to make it for families." And I said, "On that condition, I will surrender my papers." And of course, if I was going to sue in court, I would have to give all the papers to ORA first, or I wouldn't be able to use them in the report. So I did hand them over to the Department of Justice and to ORA. And I think without Bill Lann Lee's help, we wouldn't have been able to get reparations. I think it was a point where they had refused the railroad workers for so long, they had kind of backed themselves into a corner and didn't know how to come out. And I think Bill Lann Lee was a bridge to help them and help us. And after we made our appeal, in ten days, he gave us a verdict at a press conference in Los Angeles. And they asked me to come, and I refused because when I left Washington, I was told by JACL that it looked like it was only going to be for the workers. And they said that they didn't think they could get it through for the families. And I was upset because De De Greene had told me before I went to Washington that it would be for families. And they kept asking me to come for the press conference, and I kept refusing. And finally, we did get to ORA, and they said it would be very, very good news. So with that, they asked me to please come, and it was for the families.

RP: What emboldened you to go ahead and sort of pick up the torch on this? I know you were personally affected, but activists just don't pop out of the woodwork.

FS: Well, I think I had always kind of taken care of my family, my parents, after my sisters and brothers grew up. I was twelve. And I kind of had to take over the responsibilities because they were non-English speaking, or limited English-speaking people. This is just something I felt the government owed my father, was an apology for that firing because it did take a lot out of all of us. And it was, I guess it was a personal vendetta I had that I had to clear his name. And the more they refused me, the harder I fought because I knew it was an FBI firing, and I couldn't prove it. And it was so frustrating until I did find the paperwork. And with that, I think Patty Wada from National JACL had told me to contact NCRR in Los Angeles. And I contacted them, and they offered me a trip, an opportunity to go back to Washington and present our case. And this is where Amy Matsuura and I went to Washington and went in front of the panel and brought our stories out. And Bill Lann Lee ruled in our favor, and, of course, all the attorneys agreed to it. But we did everything they asked us to do, and it seemed like they were putting up roadblocks every time. And I got to the point where, at one point, I had told De De Greene, "I really believe you were trying to help us. But now I'm beginning to wonder, because you've given us roadblock after roadblock." And I'm not so sure that you're trying to help the railroad workers. And, of course, this kind of upset her, and I told her I'd bring the paperwork to show her that I really believed in her at one point. And at the meeting, Bill Lann Lee had come to the table and he was shuffling through his paperwork, and De De happened to be sitting across the table from me. So I gave her my paperwork and told her how I felt about it. How I felt that they weren't really helping us anymore. And Bill Lann Lee had been listening to our conversation, which I didn't know. And I told 'em, I said, "This ORA just doesn't have the leadership." It was just like 1942, you know, no one could lead anybody. So once I met with Bill Lann Lee at Sac State for a function there, and he was ribbing me and saying, "I'm not afraid to make decisions, Fumie." But we had a nice friendship afterwards.

RP: Bill was, he was an assistant attorney general?

FS: He was acting (assistant) attorney general at the time, and later he became assistant attorney general.

RP: Which would have been under the Clinton administration?

FS: This is under the Clinton administration. He had, there was a... somebody from Utah who was fighting (against him). Because Bill Lann Lee was... what was that act? Gosh, I can't think of the name of it (affirmative action). But this man from Utah was against the thing, so he was against Bill Lann Lee being (confirmed). But I think Clinton put it through with another bill, and got the papers through for him.

<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.

<Begin Segment 11>

RP: Can you talk a little bit about the Kaneko case and other efforts that sort of preceded your...

FS: Uh-huh. Mrs. Kaneko had, her husband had filed a lawsuit against the government, and I think they had filed two lawsuits, if I'm not correct. There's an attorney in Los Angeles that was representing him, and he said that he presented Andy Russell's papers during that trial, but they were refused, and they lost the case. When I had my papers in, they told me they weren't going to make a ruling until after the Kaneko case. Because if the Kaneko case won, they wouldn't have to rule on it. But when Mrs. Kaneko lost her case, they then acted on my paperwork.

RP: Why do you think she lost the case?

FS: You know, it's tough to try to beat the government in a court of law, because you're in a government court, a U.S. court, fighting the U.S. Government. And it's a tough, tough case. There were many Latin American Peruvians who settled in the Mochizuki case for five thousand dollars. There were some Peruvians who backed out of the case because they felt it was a slap in the face, that they were being treated second-class. They wanted the full twenty thousand or nothing. And I asked one lady why she accepted the five thousand instead of fighting for the twenty thousand, because her brothers are fighting for the twenty thousand. And she says, "You know, Fumie, it's hard to beat the government. You can't beat the government." So there is a clause in the Mochizuki case that if anybody gets the twenty thousand, they will all get it. So with her two brothers, Art Shibayama, fighting for the reparations, there's a chance that she will still get the full twenty thousand. But she settled for the five thousand. They settled on the five thousand because the people in Japan are all dying off, and they felt they had to get them something, and five thousand was better than nothing. And hopefully they can get the twenty thousand later. But we're still fighting for that, too.

RP: That's what you received?

FS: We received the full twenty thousand.

RP: Was there any type of an apology letter?

FS: Yes, we did get a letter of apology, signed. I've got it framed in my family room.

RP: Similar wording as...

FS: The same wording as my husband's, yes. And, in fact, my uncle was in very poor condition, he was very ill on his deathbed, and they did give me a special letter for him before he died. Of course, he had already gotten his reparations because he had been sent to camp, but I wanted to get a letter of apology for his firing, and they did handle that for me.

RP: Your uncle was the one who went to Tule Lake?

FS: Yes, uh-huh. So he got his letter and his reparations for internment, but they did give him a letter for the firing, an apology for the firing.

RP: Okay, so that's the same uncle who was fired...

FS: From the railroad, right.

RP: But he was allowed to go to camp.

FS: He went to camp, and in fact, I have pictures of the railroad bosses coming to Tule Lake and asking him to come to work when he got out of camp.

RP: Is that what happened?

FS: Uh-huh. So I have pictures of the railroad bosses asking him to return. And I think there were a few other workers there in camp. So we had the picture of that.

KP: Can I ask why your uncle went to camp?

FS: He was living in Sacramento at the time. He moved from Reno to Sacramento, he was working for the railroad.

RP: So did you, did the rest of the family consider doing the same? You said that you asked the government to put you in a camp, did you consider the possibility of relocating into the exclusion area?

FS: Yes, because when you have five children, four children or five children, it's very hard to try to make a living when the father doesn't have a job. And at that time, with the wartime hysteria, not too many people were willing to hire him. And if it was, it was a minimum type of job with minimum pay. So the only chance he had was to go into business on his own.

<Begin Segment 12>

RP: A large part of your success in achieving redress is to be laid at the doorstep of Michi Weglyn.

FS: Michi Weglyn did a lot for us. She kept pushing us to keep writing letters to the different vernaculars. Because ORA had subscriptions to all the Japanese vernaculars, so everything we wrote, they were reading in Washington, D.C. She said that if we didn't keep fighting, the reparations would run out. So she and her husband both helped us, and really pushed us. We talked many, many times, long distance, and talking with Michi Weglyn was a two-hour conversation, long distance from New York to California. But we had many, many conversations.

RP: She also supported you with editorial letters.

FS: Right. And she responded to the letters that I wrote, and she came up with an article about why Fumie Shimada deserved reparations. And I've got copies of that.

RP: Where was that published?

FS: It was published in the Los Angeles Rafu Shimpo, and it was also in the Hokubei and Nichibei. Of course, those are the only three Japanese vernaculars we have besides Pacific Citizen. So it was all covered under that. And so when she went to Los Angeles for the Time of Remembrance, that was right after I had come home from Washington, D.C., and my husband and I traveled. In fact, I came home from Washington, I believe, on a Wednesday, and we traveled on Saturday/Sunday to their Time of Remembrance, because Michi was being honored there. And then the following Tuesday, they asked me to come back for the press conference on Friday. And I said, "I can't drive to Los Angeles twice in one week. I can't leave my job," because I had taken so much time off to go to Washington. But I ended up taking some more time to go to meet with Bill Lann Lee. So it was very worthwhile.

RP: Just for the sake of the interview, could you share with us a little bit about Michi's background? Some people might not be familiar with her.

FS: Michi Weglyn wrote (Years) of Infamy, the book, and she was a very staunch supporter of the Latin American Peruvians, of the Japanese railroad workers, and the different Japanese that were mistreated during the war. She was interned, I think, in Gila. And she really, really did a lot of studying in the Archives and in the Smithsonian. She was sending me paperwork constantly about the railroad, I was sending her the clippings that I was finding. But I believe it was her husband that told her, "You've got to help the railroad workers." And, of course, he passed away, and sadly, Michi passed away also. We lost a good supporter, a good friend with that. We did have a memorial service for her in San Francisco, which Kenji Taguma kind of started up for us. So we were all there for her service. She was a wonderful lady, just a wonderful, wonderful lady. A hard fighter. She used to spend so many hours in the Smithsonian, and she wasn't allowed to take food, but she would take little pieces of nori and stick it in her pocket and she'd pull it out and eat it in there because she wasn't allowed to have a regular lunch. But she survived on pieces of nori in order to help us. So a good... good, good person. Good friend.

<Begin Segment 13>

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.

<Begin Segment 14>

RP: Fumie, just to backtrack a little bit, can you tell us a little bit about your life after you left Reno, you became a teacher?

FS: Oh, okay.

RP: Well, first of all, before we step away from the redress, can you share with us how you located Andy Russell's thesis that was so instrumental? I would say, you would probably agree, the "smoking gun" in successfully getting redress.

FS: Well, I had attended, I was raised in Sparks, I went to UNR, and I taught school for a year in Sparks, and then I moved to Sacramento and starting teaching in California. Meanwhile, as Michi Weglyn told me to look through the governor's papers to see if I can find even a scrawled note on the conversation he had with Herb Covington. So I says, "I don't think it's going to be on paper." And so I told my husband, "There's nothing to lose, let's go to the library and see what we can find." I said, "It's got to be someplace." 'Cause I had been at UNR, and I went through all the vernaculars. I read through all the newspapers that would have anything to do with that era. I didn't realize the hate that was involved at that time, because I was so young. And when I was reading the papers, I was astonished at the headlines and the words. I mean, everything was "Jap" this and "Jap" that, which would not fly at all today. But as I was reading all these papers, and we went to Carson and we were looking through different boxes of information, 'cause nothing was on file and we brought all this transportation and all this labor paper and everything, and I went through every single box and couldn't find it. And I looked at the guy, and I said, "I know it's someplace here. I'm just not looking in the right places." But after three or four trips there, he had written me a letter and said, "Fumie, there's a person here who heard Andy Russell's speech on railroad workers, so look up Andy Russell and try to find his speech." Well, the person in the archives there was the son of one of my college professors, my political science classes. The person he was referring to that went to listen to Andy Russell was a close family friend. He was the son of a family friend. So I went to different places, they told me to the Railroad Museum, I went there, they told me to go to the regular museum, I knew it wouldn't be there. And so they told me to go to UNR.

And I went there, and they were giving me all these different books on railroads, and I said, "This isn't what I'm looking for. I'm looking for something about Japanese railroad workers during World War II." Meanwhile, this docent comes out with the manila file folder, and I said, "What's that?" He says, "It's Andy Russell's thesis." I said, "Oh my gosh, this is what I've been looking for." I says, "Has ORA seen this?" and he says, "No, ORA had been here about four years prior asking us to give them any information we can." But they said, "This just came in, we haven't even bound it yet." I says, "Oh my gosh, we grabbed it out of his hands." It was almost closing time, but my husband was reading that and I was going through other papers, and he says, "Fumie," he says, "you've got to look at this. Look at this." And I looked at it, it was a "smoking gun." It quoted the FBI agents, and they had names of FBI agents. It was a letter, the attorney for the mining company had written to the president of the mining company, and telling them about the meeting they had with the FBI agents present. And they had even named the agent as Olsen, being there. So I said, "Oh my gosh, Sam, go make copies. So we made copies, and I was, he was reading it first and I was reading after him, and so he went and made copies. And I had a call in to Andy Russell, and he'd given me his phone number prior to this time I went to this UNR. And I called and they said, "No, this is his ex-wife's phone number, but we'll try to get Andy Russell to call you." So while I was at the, reading his thesis, he was calling me long distance in Sacramento. So went and ate dinner at the Nugget and we came home, and eleven o'clock, my son comes running out of the house and he says, "Mom, Andy Russell called." And I says, "Howard, I can't return the call, because he's in Arizona and the time change." I says, "I'll call him tomorrow." And so anyway, when I called him, I was just thrilled. And he said, "Yeah," I says, "Do you have those papers? I've been reading your thesis. Do you have the letters to support your paper?" He says, "Yes," I says, "Well, can I have a copy? I need it." He did this without knowing that we were fighting for reparations. And he was just, he was just sent from heaven to me. [Laughs]

And so I got the papers, and I immediately notified ORA and DOJ that I had these papers, and I was ready to go to court. I had a pro bono attorney, so I said, "I would like you to rule on my papers before the deadline, to give me time, in case you refuse me, I would like to have a court date set up." And I says, "I'm ready to fight you all the way to the Supreme Court, because I know I'm correct." And with that, DOJ quit communicating with me. [Laughs] But De De Greene and I kept talking, and Joanne Cliedi, and De De says, "Well, we're really anxious to see these papers." So there was a meeting with ORA in San Francisco. There was one in Los Angeles, and the next day, they were coming to San Francisco, so she says, "Would you bring it to the meeting?" And I said, I certainly will." Meanwhile, my nephew went to the meeting in Los Angeles. I said, "Go and talk to them, and then get back to me and let me know what they have to say." Well, he told them that it was an FBI firing, and they said no, it was a railroad firing. And he says, "Well, my auntie doesn't agree with you." [Laughs] And so when they came to San Francisco, I met with them, and they said, "Go in the back door, find some other way to get reparations. You're not going get 'em with the railroad." And we said, "No, we want railroad or nothing. We're not going through any back door." So Joanne Cliedi said, "Are they papers I can kiss all the way home?" And I said, "You can kiss 'em twice all the way home." [Laughs] So she says okay, that they were really interested, 'cause they hadn't seen these papers. But yet, there was an attorney in Los Angeles who had submitted these same papers in Mrs. Kaneko's lawsuit, and they lost the case. And when he told me this, I didn't believe it because ORA and DOJ both said, "We've never seen these papers." And I don't know why they hadn't seem 'em, 'cause they ruled on Mrs. Kaneko's case, they fought her on that.

<Begin Segment 15>

FS: So anyway, I guess it was convincing enough that we went to the press conference in Los Angeles, and we're sitting around the table and Bill Lann Lee walks in and talks a little bit about his family. He started talking about reparations, and in seven minutes he said, "We're giving you reparations." And my husband says, "Wait a minute. For ten years you've been denying everything. Why did you change your mind in seven days?" Because (we'd) been in Washington seven days before that. And I just kicked him under the table, I said, "Don't you know when to shut up?" [Laughs] But he explained to us it was different researchers, and different things that made them decide to rule in our favor. So he had told us no press conference. So we didn't invite anybody, TV stations. Well, he had set up a press conference, and he had notified people. We said, "Gee, if we had known that, we would have called the TV stations and everything else. But after he announced it to us, he said, "Open the doors and let the press in." And we were kind of in shock, 'cause he had said no press conference. So my husband and I had moved to the back of the room, and he had this podium in the front, and he had like a seven-page typed thing that he was reading off of. And my husband and I were sitting in the back of the room, and Bill said something and I can't remember what. My husband, who usually has no, never shows any affection, jumped up and hugged me. And all of a sudden, this newspaper thought, "Something's going on," so they came over and they started taking pictures of us. And I'm kind of grinning because if they ever knew they were wasting all this film. [Laughs] And then this newspaper from Japan was there, and they thought, "Well, if he's taking pictures, I better get over." So he came over and started taking pictures. Well, Bill saw all this going on in the back of the room during his speech. So after he finished, he says, "We have a railroad family member in our audience who would like to come up and give her speech." And I thought, "You've got to be kidding. Here you have seven or ten pages of prepared information and you expect me to get up to just start talking?" So I ignored him, and I sat there. Then my husband says, "They're waiting." And I said, "They can wait forever, 'cause I'm not moving." [Laughs] And he says, "They're waiting, you better get up there." So between the time I left my seat to the time I got to the podium, I'm trying to think, "What can I say?" and I just didn't know what to say. So as I got up there, Bill Lann Lee says, "I'm going to stand next to you." I said, "Okay." He says, "Well, I'm going to give you a kiss," and he gives me a kiss. And I thought, "Okay." He says, "Now, give your press conference." So I thought, well, and I went up and I started thanking all the people who had worked with me and helped me along the way. And my husband's all nervous, he says, "I kept thinking, 'Oh gosh, don't leave anybody out.'" Because there's nothing worse than leaving out an important person. But he says, "I think you covered everybody."

So I said, "Thank you," and I started to leave, and Bill grabs my arm. He says, "That was beautiful, now (give your) press conference." I said, "That was my press conference." He says, "No, it's not." [Laughs] So by then, all these microphones are in my face, and I said, I told my husband, "I don't know what I said," because I was just, you know, in a daze. And I read it the next day in the newspaper, and I says, "I must have said this," but I didn't realize what I was saying. But I had to laugh because while I was in Washington, the prongs on my wedding ring, the diamond, was loose. So I had taken my ring off and sent it back to my nephew, who's a jeweler. Well, I guess the Japanese newspapers figured I wasn't married, so they called my husband Kametaro Shimada, and it came out in the papers. I told my husband, "My father is just rolling over in his grave when he sees that." [Laughs] But outside of that, I think everything went fine. But we had to laugh about "Kametaro Shimada." [Laughs]

<Begin Segment 16>

FS: But it was, you know, it's been a wonderful experience because I've met so many wonderful people in my travels. I went to UNLV and we had a little night there, of Andy Russell and I being on a panel. We've gone to New Mexico at the University of New Mexico, and Andy and I and his wife served on a panel there. And I've just met all these wonderful people at NCRR. I think there were about thirteen of us that went to Washington, D.C. along with Amy Matsuura and different people. And then I worked with the Latin American Peruvians. Grace Shimizu and I have gotten very close, and we've met together. And I said, "Grace, I want to help you," because I know the people who helped me, it was wonderful, and I wanted to do some payback.

RP: Give something back.

FS: So I've worked with the Latin American Peruvians. But I've just made such wonderful friends, you know. And I've had people call me from all over the United States. Florida called and did an interview for a paper. She did two articles on us. I can remember my dentist was telling me he was vacationing in Oregon and picked up the newspaper and he says, "There's my Fumie, right there in the newspaper," he was reading about me. I've had phone calls from Los Angeles asking for information. I had a girl from Seattle, Washington, call, thinking that she would be qualified for reparations because she lived near a railroad trestle. And she says, "ORA is telling me I need to know the railroad trestle," she says, "can you help me?" And I said, "You know, I have a little book I made up on all this, let me look it up and see if I can find it." So I called her back and I read her the description, she says, "That's the trestle." So I said, "Okay, let me give you a copy of what I have." And she wrote me back and she says, "Five of us got reparations because you helped us. This is wonderful." Evidently, they lived next to this railroad trestle and there was an FBI agent stationed at the trestle, so they couldn't -- I says, "What was on the other side of that trestle?" She says, "Swampland." I said, "Why would you want to cross it?" She says, "We didn't, but we were living by the..." so she says, "I think we're qualified," and they were. But here, they can qualify with that, but workers who were fired were denied? I don't understand this.

You know, they said, one of the ORA people had said the loss of a job is loss of civil property. And I says, "On that basis alone, we should have gotten reparations." But we've got a lot of railroad workers who have been denied. And it's sad because a lot of them are getting old or there are some with Alzheimer's now who can't testify and do the paperwork. We've had cases where the husband has qualified and the wife's family was denied reparations. They lived in the same town. One lady from Los Angeles had a lawsuit, she worked side by side with this other family, they lived next door to each other and they worked side by side. This lady with a lawsuit got reparations, the other person, they were refused. And yet, their stories are identical. I don't understand, you know, why one worker gets it and another one doesn't. But I'm hoping the Becerra's Act will help everybody get their reparations.

RP: And that would include these marginalized groups, other railroad workers?

FS: Uh-huh, hopefully also other --

RP: Close the book?

FS: -- Japanese American Niseis who did not apply because they didn't know they were qualified. In Reno, we have a lot of people that I think should have gotten reparations that didn't even file because they didn't think they were qualified. I talked to one person from JACL, and they said, "Boy, you shouldn't have gotten reparations." I says, "Well, they told us we were a unique case," he says, "There are no such thing as unique cases." But I says, well, he says, "My sister-in-law got reparations 'cause she was a railroad." I said, "Good for her." But we've had people who objected to us getting it, I don't understand why. You know, and there's other people who said we didn't deserve it, but they didn't even know our stories. There's other people who I think really should get reparations, and I'd like to help all of them get their reparations. They said the Italians are thinking about fighting for reparations, and I says, "They should," and I think they deserve it. I said I'd be happy to work with them to try to get their reparations.

RP: There's an organization representing German Americans.

FS: You know, there's a couple of people who have spoken on Grace Shimizu's panels about their internment. There's also a lot of Muslims who have been sent back to their country because -- just like the Japanese. And in a lot of cases, the Muslims parallel the Japanese Americans. So we've been working together, especially in Sacramento, with CAIR membership and everything. Because they said, "You were interned physically, we're interned mentally. Yeah. So history is starting to repeat itself. There's also, I found out, two internment camps the government was building to house the Muslims. That was during Desert Storm or something. So they are still trying to build internment camps. They haven't learned from the Japanese experience. And this is why the Muslims are really running scared, and rightfully so because so many things are being done parallel the Japanese experience. And I'm amazed at some of the things our own government has done in the year 2000, interrogating the Muslims. So our job isn't finished. Reparations has ended, but it can't close the door. There's too many forgotten people. And the Latin American Peruvians certainly deserve their reparations and their day in court.

<Begin Segment 17>

RP: So what, as a final sort of wrap up question, Fumie, what advice would you offer to young people today in terms of trusting your government or fighting for your rights, speaking out? And you're a great example of all those.

FS: Well, you know, the Florin JACL chapter has held a lot of little workshops for the young kids, and it's amazing because we asked them, "What would you do if this happened to you today?" And most of 'em said, "We don't want to go to jail, so we'll just go to internment." Which really surprised us because being third or fourth generation, we figured they'd be fighting harder than we were. And yet, they don't understand why the Nisei "obediently" obeyed the government and did what they were told to do. And they can't understand why we didn't fight it. But yet, when we asked them, "What would you do?" They said, "We don't want to go to prison so we'll just go to camp." And that kind of puzzled us. But I think there's a lot of people who have not been speaking about their internment because the pain is just too much for them to repeat again. And a lot of people don't know that their grandparents were interned. I know this one Latin American Peruvian daughter was at a workshop at Time of Remembrance with Grace Shimizu, and she came home and told her mother, "Did you know what happened to the Latin American Peruvians?" And she says, "Honey, your grandfather and I were interned." And she says, "I never knew it. I was a sophomore in college before I found out that my grandparents had been interned along with my mother," because no one had spoken about it. So I think as the Nisei generation are now dying off, we have to get our stories out. Because the young ones will never know unless they hear it from us. And I think more and more now, they're coming out and they're asking about internment. And they're doing high school papers on internment and different things. But the history books haven't contributed anything to it. And I'm sure Sarah Palin being the first woman vice presidential candidate is going to make, is going to make history books. But I think the internment has to make the history books also. And I think they said there was one paragraph in the history book about internment. And that certainly doesn't speak for everything that's happened.

But I've run across so many people who have said they didn't know about the Japanese railroad workers. They knew about the Chinese railroad workers building the continental railway, but they didn't know Japanese worked on the railroad. So I think it's a story that we all have to get written up and have there for our grandchildren, our children.

RP: Why do you -- was it an issue of awareness that Japanese railroad workers and mine workers weren't included in the original Civil Liberties Act legislation?

FS: When I was in Washington, a JACL person came up and said, "Fumie, we didn't know about the railroad workers or we would have included you." But I'm not so sure, because when they went for reparations for internment, it was so far out that everybody said, "It'll never happen." So they had to narrow it down. From what I understand, they had included all these Alaskans and the Latin American Peruvians, but they thought, "We've got to get a bill that will be sure to get through," so they cut out a lot of people, and they centered it on internment so they could get something through. And with that, it opened the gates and the doors for everybody else, but they said that they didn't cover it because if they made it too elaborate, it wouldn't fly in Congress. So I don't know if they really would have included the railroads. They excluded the Peruvians who were included at the very beginning. But they did say, "We didn't know about you." And I think it's true with anything else, no one wants to go around telling people that, "My father was fired," or, "My uncle was fired," or, "My brother was fired," you know, by the government. So in a way, it's the Japanese way to be haji, kind of embarrassed by it. Gaman, which means to suffer and persevere, and I think this is true of all the Japanese people. It probably won't be true of our Sansei and Yonsei generation, but it's certainly true of the Issei and Niseis. But like we say, the Niseis are all dying off now. So I receive the Pacific Citizen, and I think there were three World War II military men who passed away. You know, I mean, the 442nd is just disappearing. I have a friend in Blackfoot, Idaho, who was a member. He says, "There's only two of us left in our unit." So I think we've got to get the word out and get it into history books, and make it well-known on the East Coast. There's a lot of people living on the East Coast, New Jersey, because of the frozen food company there. I have relatives in Chicago that would not come back to California after internment. They said the discrimination was so bad, they just didn't want to come back, so they settled back east. But evidently, they're not talking about internment either because the East Coast, people do not know what internment is. Bill Lann Lee said he wasn't aware of it until one of his college friends talked about it and took him to visit an internment camp. So we've got to educate everybody on this.

RP: Hopefully our interview today will impact in that direction. Thank you so much for your time today and your special story.

FS: I hope so. And thank you very much for helping us tell our story.