Densho Digital Archive - Mary Suzuki Ichino Interview II (denshovh-imary-02-0024)

<Begin Segment 24>

RP: I wanted to kind of follow up on the discussion we had about the letter and about, you know, the commission issued its findings and eventually the bill was agreed upon and drafted and passed by Congress and signed by President Reagan.

MI: Right, that was interesting.

RP: It's the same guy you talked about earlier. So, again as a person who, you know, personally protested their incarceration by writing a letter to the, one of the architects of that incarceration, how did the passage of the Civil Liberties Act affect you personally and how did you see it as, did you see it as a healing, not only for Japanese Americans but for justice as well?

MI: I don't know whether you call it a healing. I don't think you can heal something from something, that experience. It always stays there no matter what. Because I always feel like, you know what, the person it should have impacted, it should have been my parents and other Isseis. You know, they worked so hard, the word shinbo shita, you know. They waited so long for their citizenship. They lost everything after all those years of hard labor, and some never even got that compensation because there was a deadline. And so I have very mixed feelings about it. And I said, you know, they say twenty thousand. People today sue for millions. So twenty thousand, what is that? It's a pittance. But that is not here and there, 'cause that's the monetary. It's the morality of the whole thing that I thought was wrong. And whether I'm healed by it... I wanted to still talk to General DeWitt. I just want to sit there and say, "What kind of a guy are you? What motivated you? Do you think the same thing today as you did then? Why? Why?" You know these questions, why, why. So basically everything else could be forgiven, but I don't know about him. That's me. Some people would say, "Well, forget it now." You know, I say, "Yeah, that's true, but I'm still curious to know why."