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RB: We're almost done here, I don't have that many more questions for you. But at this point, I'd love to ask a question or two about your mom's work during redress and any recollections that you might have of the redress period? First off, of course, your mom Grayce was very, very involved with the redress movement of the executive director of the Legislative Education Committee. Was your father also involved, were you involved in any capacity, and can you talk a little bit about the role that your mom played?

PU: So my father was involved, basically, was a support person. He was the driver and the housekeeper, things like that. And he just kind of provided the personal support space for her to say, "Fine, go. That's important, go do that, I'll help out." Having to kind of manage the household and so on, with her not there half of the week, because she was staying in Washington that half of the week. That's how he kind of helped out. It wasn't like she was free the other half of the week. When she was at home, she was also submerged every day, seven days a week, day and night, doing redress work, whether she was at home in West Chester for an office in D.C. So the fact that he was trying to support her and allow her the space to do that was kind of what his responsibility and role was, and he was fine with that. So before she took this position, her work in redress had kind of stepped up gradually over time, so she had been recruited to be on the national JACL Redress Committee, and was doing that work. And then she was coordinating the local redress committees on the Eastern District Council. So she was responsible for the chapters, I think it was probably five chapters at that point in the Eastern District. Kind of coordinating, gathering information, forwarding information and sending information down to the chapter level, apparently doing a good job at that. Because a decision was made that needed to form this separate nonprofit to house the lobbying work and protect the 501(c)(3) status of JACL. So that decision was made, we need to raise money for the Legislative Education Committee, and people... because it was around that time that she retired from the Lower Merion School District, from her school social work position, and so they recruited her to do this work initially as a volunteer because their fundraising had failed. They were supposed to raise, I think, like a quarter million dollars to get the ball rolling, and they raised forty thousand. And so they knew they couldn't actually hire her, so they asked her to volunteer for six months to get things started. And so then she started this grind of going back and forth, and helping to strategize and meeting with Nikkei members of Congress and interfacing with JACL leadership and also the grassroots chapters and so on. During that, so this would have been 1985 to '88 when that whole lobbying campaign was undertaken, and so for me -- and I'm really sad about this in retrospect -- is that was the same time that I was going to law school at night and working during the day at Legal Services. And so she was doing that and I was just trying to keep my head above water, going to work, and then going to class at night and basically reading all weekend. So I didn't know very much about what she was doing. It was more what I learned about after the fact, and it's sad because I could have been helpful or more supportive of that, but I was consumed with survival with what I was doing at that point. I didn't know that much about or get involved that much in what she was doing.

RB: So I know two other Nisei leaders here that were pretty involved. Judge Marutani, of course, with his role in the CWRIC, and then also your uncle Tak, I think he helped to make some introductions to some of the Republican congressmen and senators and he was a donor to the redress movement.

PU: Yes, yes.

RB: Can you talk at all about either of those, did you talk to Uncle Tak about what he was doing with redress or do you have anecdotal information you can share?

PU: No, I mean, I just know that my mother would have gone to him and pushed him to donate a lot of money, because she knew that he had money, more so than our family did, because he had been, he was a successful farmer. And yeah, I mean, part of what her function was was to kind of figure out how to tap into the networks that each individual JACL member belonged to, to find connections from those individuals to members of Congress. So that's what they would kind of figure out how to do, how to meet people, how to get letters written to members of Congress, how to get meetings scheduled because there were influential constituents like my uncle that would be heard by congressional staff people. So, yeah, I know that she would have been engaged in those activities with him, and just like she was with everybody else she knew in JACL, but maybe with him she could twist arms a little bit harder because he was her brother-in-law.

RB: I heard that Tak also donated a significant amount to help with the restoration of this group, and I don't know if you had heard that.

PU: I didn't know that.

RB: Yeah, Miyo confirmed that, but we had seen his name on the donor roll.

PU: Oh, cool.

RB: All right, I think that was it for the redress questions.

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