<Begin Segment 10>

HH: What were the major frustrations and obstacles that you had to deal with in this project?

GU: Well, I guess if everybody knows that I speak out, I'm pretty straightforward, I don't know why the leadership asked a female. Because generally, the leadership was still the older Japanese Americans, and you know, women in JACL did all the gofer kinds of things, the things that kept the organization going but never took any leadership role. And to have these same fellows decide that I was the one to go to Washington, I always wondered in the back of my mind, was it based on the fact that they didn't have money to pay anybody? I did six months of volunteer work, and until they could get beyond that fifty thousand dollars, and eventually when they got over the two hundred dollars, then we had a meeting in Senator Inouye's chambers. And I said, well, it looks like we have money now to hire a professional fundraiser. And I'm sitting next to the senator, and he turns around and looks at me and says, "Why do we need a professional fundraiser? We have Grayce Uyehara here." And he said, "That's all we need. And here I thought I was going to finish my stint after six months. So by then, I had gone on social security so that they still they still couldn't pay me enough to overcome that. And so I just worked mainly for expenses and what social security would allow me at that phase. And it ended up as my three-year stint in Washington.

And so one of the things is that I had to deal with a Japanese male ego, and all of them were pretty strong individuals: Min Yasui, Mike Masaoka, Grant Ujifusa. But we still kept our eyes on the ball, and we kept working at it. And the one who was the leader in the Senate was Senator Spark Matsunaga. And he was such an effervescent individual. And you know, after the first go-around, you have to start all over again in the new congressional session. And he only had twenty-nine the previous session, and after we got to twenty-nine, I said, "Senator, are you going to introduce the bill?" He says, "No, Grayce, I think we can go for more. Let's be set to overcome any veto," which meant that he was going for about seventy. I thought, "Oh, my goodness." So I thought when we got to fifty supporters signing on from the Senate, he would change his mind, but he really went "go for broke." And the plan was that the House had to introduce the bill first, and then Norman and Bob agreed with the important, key players on the House side. We just had to wait 'til we had Barney Frank of Massachusetts. First go-round was Sam Hall, he wasn't any good, from Texas, and he really insulted Mike Masaoka at the hearings. Then the next time was a congressman from Kansas, and he just wasn't willing to take any risks, but along comes Barney Frank, and he said, "We're going to get it through this time." And so they decided that they would shoot for the bicentennial of the United States Constitution, because the whole issue was a denial of our constitutional rights. And so they were going to put it vote then, and I said, "Wait a minute, everybody's going to leave Washington to go celebrate." "No, no, no, there will be enough votes. That will make an impression." And so when it passed in the House, we just, Mike sitting next to me, Grant and myself, I just started to cry. And Norm and Bob were waving to us from down there. And so then we planned that once the House bill went through, it wasn't going to be that tough, because the Senate is much smaller and they were going to introduce it. But what happens next month? October of 1987, there's a Wall Street crash, and you just cannot introduce a bill with money attached. So they said, well, we just can't do it, we're going to have to wait for the next session. And so Senator had to start all over again, and it took until, I think it was in June of 1988, and then the committee met, the bill was put into committee, and they came through in July, and President Reagan signed the bill, August 10 -- I hope I have the right date -- 1988.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 1994 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.