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KK: So, I'll tell one last story about what I think told a lot about her dedication for redress. And it was kind of an interesting story too about how I learned about this. After the fact, when Born in Seattle was written, of course, she had multiple copies. And she very kind of nonchalantly said, "Oh, if you want to read about redress, here's this book here." And I said, "Oh, okay." Well, I come to find out her name is written throughout this book about how she played this leadership role. So I opened the book just to see what was in it, and I opened to this one page, which was kind of later in the book. And it was kind of the 11th hour push in 1988 to get this bill passed. And part of her relentless nature and why she was known as being so relentless, there was a story about one of the bills that were to go to Congress. And the fact that there were assurances made that this bill would actually go. She was the only one who stayed up in a hotel room reading the bill to the very end. And at the very end, she discovered that they had gutted the part about monetary compensation. And of course, she got on the phone, she got very upset. She alerted everyone and their cousin about the fact that, "This is not right. You cannot..." The story goes is that if she hadn't been the one to read that bill all the way through, another bill would have gone through, and it wouldn't have been the case that Japanese Americans would have got some compensation, which later turned out to be in the form of $20,000. That wouldn't have happened.

Back to the story. I opened this book, and I'm reading about the last minute lobbying before the redress bill went to the floor, and I went on this passage that said you have people lobbying the Washington congressional delegation to all vote for the redress bill, and I'll read just a few paragraphs. It says, "Of all the Washington State delegation, Representative Chandler, who was a conservative congressman, was the most difficult to convince, deciding to vote for H.R. 442 the day before the final House vote." And that was the redress bill. "Cherry Kinoshita, Tomio Moriguchi, and Tom Goto met with Chandler. In late summer, Chandler was still reluctant. Kinoshita asked if his position could be characterized as quote/unquote, 'qualified support.'" Unquote. "Chandler answered, 'Before you quote me and give the wrong impression, just say to your group that you went away disappointed.' As the three lobbyists stood up to leave, Kinoshita, in last minute desperation, turned to Chandler and said, 'When it comes time to vote, please remember that if for no other reason, you should vote for the redress bill, because it is the right thing to do,' and they left. Not sure whether the congressman would heed her words, Kinoshita later watched the congressional debate on television. On C-SPAN, as the House debate progressed, there was representative Chandler at the podium saying, 'I have thought about this with my mind for a long time, and until this week, I was undecided. But when I turned to my heart, I realized that this has got to be done. Let us do it. Because ultimately, it is the right thing to do.'" And the vote passed in both the House and Senate. And that was like, "Oh, my gosh, spooky." I turned to that page, and I thought, oh my gosh, that just said so much about my mom. And that was really, what it was about if it boils, gets down to why she was so relentless. I think later on, she was asked, you know, you kind of made your life, you could have been comfortable, why did you spend eighteen years working on this? And she said, "Because it was the right thing to do." And she says, "It was because this country supposedly was founded on certain ideals, and this country had to live up to them. And that's why I continued to persist all those years." So, I'll stop there again.

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