<Begin Segment 15>

LG: So I guess we can pick off where Rob left off, the question that he wanted to move to? I'm trying to remember what it...

MN: It had to do with the Commission on Wartime Relocation?

LG: Yeah, do you want to talk a little bit about that?

MN: Yeah. Let's say, it... I think this goes back now to the early '80s. The Commission had been established, I think it had ten members appointed by President Jimmy Carter. And it was... I think the chair of that committee was Arthur Goldberg, former Supreme Court Justice. And it included a number of former government officials, and included Bill Marutani, who was a Common Pleas Court judge here, he was the only, I think he was the only Japanese American on that body. And the Commission made recommendations with one dissent, I think, the congressional member from California, I think his name was Dan Lungren who opposed the recommendations. But the recommendations included having a payment of twenty thousand dollars to each internee, surviving internee, and a formal apology from the United States government. And then funds, whatever leftover funds that were, would be used to develop curricula and artifacts and other items and materials to note this experience, you know, the internment, its meaning. So, anyway, I think that's the backdrop for it. You're probably familiar with it, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to repeat the obvious, but I attended one of the public sessions of the Commission. And I attended it with Lou Schneider, Lou Schneider had been the former general secretary of the American Friends Service Committee. This was, I think, maybe a year or two after he had retired. And I had been, I had helped craft the -- excuse me -- the testimony of the American Friends Service Committee for the Commission, in which we supported all those things that had just been advocated, or advocated, which the Commission also supported.

And the Commission, let's see, as I recall it, the hearings were... let's see. So this must have been 1981 or '82. And what I remember about it was that Lou spoke on behalf of the organization, and we submitted the testimony. And as we both rose to leave the room, there was sort of, this was a spontaneous standing up of, I think, probably most of the Nikkei in the room to applaud, because they were applauding the work of the American Friends Service Committee during that period of the internment. The Service Committee had been one of the only organizations that offered support direct support and material assistance to the internees, and they also provided assistance for internees who were being relocated throughout the country. So there were these centers in places like Des Moines, Iowa, you know, and there had also been college students who were sustained by, you know, assistance that was organized by the Service Committee, so that they could, you know, go to Swarthmore, Bryn Mawr, or Haverford or Grinnell, or in Bill Marutani's case, South Dakota Wesleyan, where he was a classmate of then to be Senator George McGovern, turns out. But anyway, as we were rising to get out, I remember this spontaneous standing of when he came here, and they were applauding, because it was an applause, not for us, or at least not for us alone. But I think for the Friends Service Committee, and not only for Quakers in general, for their role, it was a very, very moving experience, certainly for me. And I've said this before, that it was probably one of the proudest moments I've ever had as a staffperson for the Friends Service Committee. Since there was, it was one of those things where they didn't have to do the right thing, but they did. And there was, you know, it was against the grain. I mean, the war was popular, probably hardly anyone knew much about the internment east of the Mississippi, you know, at that time, and a lot of people west of the Mississippi didn't know much about it either. So it was a nice moment, and I still remember it.

LG: So happened after this moment? How did your work continue?

MN: Well, we were advocates for internment -- I mean, not for internment, for redress. We were, that was around '81, '82, the redress bill, I think, didn't pass until, I think it was 1988. And the dispersal of redress funds didn't take place until I think around the early '90s. So it was a long, extended process, and, of course, you had the movement which preceded it, and lots of strategic discussion and disagreement about how to proceed, you know, about redress. We had talked earlier about some of the conflicts of which, you know, to which the Japanese American Citizens League was a part. And one of, there were people in the Japanese American community who felt that, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead, let's go to court right now." There were those who said, well, let's put a bill in right now. And I think what evolved was first the establishment of this commission, precedence for that, on the very logical grounds, then most people didn't know much, if anything, about the internment. And I think that was, by might sights, a master stroke because it provided a process of public education about the internment. And I think also... and this is also very important to me, it facilitated unity in the Japanese American community, and whatever disagreements that were and would continue. The process of getting witnesses, for example, I'm putting aside all the conflicts about what the JACL did or didn't do, or should have done and didn't do, were put aside and so that people could speak about their experiences, basically, as prisoners of the United States, and what that meant. So it was a very effective process, I believe, and it took it out of the realm of being just a process of special pleading. It made it a kind of fundamental human rights question, and that was very important. I mean, it's not unfamiliar in Washington, I think, when you were trying to sneak a deal through, essentially, you know, playing all the access games that you have to play to get something through. And this was quite the opposite, and it was, I think the country is better because of it, because it became a public issue, in the center of the discussion.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2023 Densho. All Rights Reserved.