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RB: So I want to sort of jump around chronologically a little bit. Going back to Tak, I know that he was pretty involved in redress, and the way that I've heard it explained was that he had relationships with some of the politicians as a donor, and so was able to then ask for meetings, which usually someone like Grayce Uyehara...

MM: Well, Grayce told Tak... I mean, Grayce Uyehara and Tak Moriuchi were two similar people in terms of, kind of being out in public, having opinions, and pretty driven to get stuff done. So when Grayce is saying, "We're going to do this," and Tak was saying, "Okay." And he had the money to support a number of different things, including the redress, including the move from, on Shofuso here. And so I think we would see the commendations Dad would get, but I think we're younger adults, we're not paying attention to what our dad's doing. [Laughs] But he was generous.

RB: So I guess you were probably quite busy with your family in those years, active in that time period. Did you ever talk to either of your parents about redress or what was happening? Was it a topic that they shared with their kids?

MM: Not particularly. Okay, so go back to high school, junior year American History class, and there was a paragraph in the history book a hundred thousand Japanese Americans incarcerated. And I might have this wrong, but I think I remember coming downstairs and saying, "Mom, Dad, is this you?" And they go, "Yeah, what did you think we were talking about when we talked about camp?" I said, "We don't know." And I think from that point, my father was buying every single book that was about, anything about Japanese Americans and the internment, et cetera. So it was stunning news to me, as a high schooler, and the following year, for my final paper, it was on mass hysteria, and sort of a precursor to my interest in psychology. So Japanese Americans, we studied the Salem witch trials and then Germany before the Holocaust, and kind of big subjects, but I drew some parallels.

RB: So in that sense, there wasn't a whole lot of conversation up until that point?

MM: No, not really. We'd hear about camp, and the Nisei would get together and they'll go, "Oh, where did you live?" and they'd say, "Seattle," and they'd go, "Oh, do you know so-and-so?" Or, "What camp were they in?" So those were the two regular questions that people shared.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2023 JACL Philadelphia. All Rights Reserved.