Densho Digital Archive - Frank Isamu Kikuchi Interview (denshovh-kfrank

<Begin Segment 15>

JA: What would you say you learned from this experience at Manzanar?

FK: Well, from this experience at Manzanar, and also because of the fact that I'm a docent at the museum and I've had to read more material to qualify, I think I'm a little bit more up to date on everything. And a little bit of the background of what happened, I would say that it's very important that all Americans be aware why we were incarcerated, what caused us to be incarcerated, and see to it it doesn't happen again. War hysteria, commercial interests, selfishness on the part of people, and not speaking up on our part more. But definitely it might happen again, if you let things run without, you know, raising your voice. Currently, the country is getting ready for a war maybe with the Arab states, and hey, there's a lot of good Arabs in this country, good Muslims, good Middle Easterners in this country, and they're doing the same thing we did, come to this country to make a living and be part of the "American Dream." They shouldn't be incarcerated; they should have their due rights. That's where we missed out, we didn't get our due process.

JA: Tell me about the main constitutional issues that you think are raised by your experiences.

FK: I don't quite understand how I'm supposed to answer that. I don't know the question, I guess.

JA: Well, I mean, you have just spoken to me about due process and --

FK: Oh.

JA: -- civil rights, but what, relative to your experience, what...

FK: Well, I, I don't know if I'm going to be answering the question correctly, but it was obvious that somewhere along the line, something slipped up where even the man who was president at that time ignored the fact that we were bona fide American citizens. And as citizens we had the right to due process, and we didn't get anything like that. They ignored it totally. In fact, with that Executive Order, he set the wheels in motion to override any of the civil rights that are basic to as a citizen. We didn't have any kind of a due process, we were just told, "Get out of here and go to camp." And it's so unfair that we didn't have a chance to really get fair compensation for everything we lost, because twenty -- fifty years later, when they did give us compensation, the people that deserved it the most, that suffered the most were already gone. And it wasn't retroactive, and you can figure out how long that period of time was, it was very unfair because most people in terms of money in those days lost so much more than that. Fifty years is half a century.

JA: When that compensation finally came, also came a letter of apology from the President.

FK: Yes.

JA: How did you feel when those things happened?

FK: Oh, it felt pretty good that finally we're back to square one, we're starting over again with no black cloud hanging over us. And the monetary sum, hey, it was useful, but it wasn't... it wasn't what it might have been, but then again, the only thing I thought was very unfair was the fact that it took so long. I know what it means when they say "justice delayed is justice denied" now because the people that deserved it the most were long gone.

JA: There was a long and active movement to get that to happen.

FK: Oh, yes, you know yourself, if you know anything about it, is it wouldn't have happened except for the fact that we had -- when I say "we," I'm speaking of the Japanese community -- we did have lawyers that were pretty smart, we had an active group of fundraisers, we had an active group of third-generation people that were more vociferous than we were as Niseis, and they all worked together and it took a long time. And I think it's sort of a model for other groups now in the way the Japanese did it, but it still took a long time. It took an awfully long time, to think about it.