This is History for the Reckoning, a podcast that dives deep into the history that's hard to hear but critical to understand. Season one: American Concentration Camps. The story of World War II Japanese Incarceration. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm your host, Spencer Ford. In our last few episodes, we've learned about the Supreme Court cases that brought the incarceration to an end, as well as the Japanese American Claims Act, a small and disastrous attempt by the government to make some rights of the damage done to the Japanese community. But the story of the incarceration doesn't end there, much as the government would have wanted it to. Over the decades post-World War II, members of the Japanese American community fought for redress and reparations for the wrongs the government had committed to incredible success. And to tell us how it all came about is my esteemed guest, John Tataishi. John literally wrote the book on the redress movement entitled Redress: The Inside Story of the Successful Campaign for Japanese American Reparations. And he could write the book because he was there for almost every step of the process, even serving for a time as the redress director for the Japanese American Citizens League. John, thank you for joining me today. Thank you for inviting me. This is uh I'm looking forward to this. Oh, thank you so much. So, directly after the war, we heard from Eric Muller how the Evacuation Claims Act was passed by Congress and it was a disaster. It was a total mess. But also that uh maybe there were hard feelings toward the JACL after the war because the JACL had been complicit in the entire incarceration. I wonder as these things happened in succession after the war, what were the feelings in the Japanese-American community? Well, the community was really pretty anti-JACL by then because first the cooperation, the uh the counsel to the community to cooperate with the government, go silently into the camps. And it was bizarre because this is how we were going to show our loyalty. And then within the camps, complicit is probably the perfect word. The JASL worked with the administrators of the camps to basically put everyone in line where they wanted them. And the JACL didn't get a lot of uh love from those of us who were in the camps. So after the war, with the failure of evacuation claims, again, the JACL was seen as sort of stoolies for the government and ineffective in trying to do anything positive towards repairing the damages done. So for a period of time, the JACL kind of stood in the dark. But the amazing thing is that a lot of the Nisse joined the JACL, partly because the JACL was uh the organization that fought for the right of the Nisse to serve in the army. And you get the miraculous story of the 442nd and the intelligence service uh Nisse soldiers. And that became sort of the high point that we could look at as part of the experience of World War II. So, what happened was that as the community evolved from the war, after the war, trying to recover, trying to rebuild, the JSL was on the sidelines, not being an integral part of anything going on in the community. And in the meantime, they were fighting for the rights of a lot of the Nisei farmers to get their property back because their farms had been stolen from them during the war. We were trying to survive, we were trying to rebuild our lives. And uh through the 50s, we were quiet, we rebuilt, we didn't really make any noise, and then the civil rights movement started in the 1960s, and that changed everything for every non-white community in the United States. The black community, of course, Latinos and Asians, the Japanese American community, which was still basically silent. But what happened was the evolution of the civil rights movement awakened all of us to the idea that you can actually change things. It was a social revolution. And for the young Japanese Americans who were then entering into colleges, it was a moment of real expansion for them. So these are younger, as in the third generation, Isei first generation, Nisei second, and these are which generations? Right. This is the third generation, the Sansei generation, which is really split into two parts. Those of us born before and during the war, and then those born after the war, after we the communities started resettling. And so eventually children started being born. So you get these kids who were born in the late 40s, early 50s. But don't remember camp. Did not know anything about camp, had no idea, because when we returned to the cities where we would reside, there was this real sense of shame. Uh because we were in prison. We had been labeled as disloyal, as traitors. And you know, you don't come out of prison saying, hey man, this is great. Within the community itself, there was total silence about the camps. Those of us who were kids, we had to talk. I mean, children don't have the same sort of alarm systems and in their brains. And so for us, we would talk about what camp was like. In fact, there was a kind of hierarchy, depending on which camp you were in, in the way kids ask each other, what school do you go to? Our question was, what camp were you in? So if you were in one of the tough camps like Manzanar or Thule Lake, you're sort of king of the hill. Or that moment. And so we talked about things. You know, we talked, we told stories about life in camps, things that happened, and we would sometimes exaggerate, maybe even lie, but there was all this dialogue going on. And it was the way I realized years later, it was the way in which we were able to find some resolution to the experience, the catharsis that the adults, our parents, never got because they were felt so shamed by the experience. Even at the dinner table, husbands and wives never talked about it. So you get these kids born after World War II in the late 40s, early 50s, growing up, never ever hearing anyone talk about camp. We, as kids, we knew this was not a subject we could bring up in the community. And so as the adults guided us through our resettling and integrating back into mainstream, that was the one thing that was unspoken as a prohibition. So as these younger kids started going to colleges, they would take American history. And every now and then some professor would uh in talking about World War II would say, Oh, and by the way, it was sort of a footnote. By the way, um the Japanese American community was put into these detention centers for their own protection. And that was all these young Sanseis would hear. And they're thinking, what the hell is this about? Keeping in mind that by this point, the civil rights movement was pretty much in full swing. I mean, there was so much momentum, and the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Right Act, all of that was coming to a head. And then these young Sanseis started hearing about camps. They talked among themselves. They didn't talk, they didn't talk to us, those of us who were older uh Sanseis, because they knew that we were, in a sense, complicit in the silence. Because we never told them about it. You know, these are younger kids. And so they started calling home and asking their parents, you know, what is this about camps? And the reaction as they started to learn about it, at first they were really angry, angry at their parents for allowing this to happen to themselves, and then angry at the community for caving in and not resisting. And it inevitably led to their talking about the forbidden subject and doing it publicly. And there was a group in Los Angeles, young street activists, who started talking about it in J Town, in Little Tokyo, and raising this issue and demanding honesty and truth. All right. So they weren't asking for any kind of action other than just tell us what happened, give us the history. Their demands were not for anything other than truth. To try to understand what happened during World War II. That evolved into a group down in Los Angeles that called itself EO9066 Inc. That was the number of the executive order that President Roosevelt signed. They were the ones who started the redress movement. They're the ones who raised the issue publicly and demanded answers. And now the Nisse were unable to hide behind the silence that they had maintained for so long. In 1970, there was a man named Edison Uno, who was part of the JACL, uh, who introduced a resolution at the convention in Chicago. And it was a resolution that essentially was it, you know, I used to kid Edison that it was a feel-good, kind of like Miss World, make the world a better place. And we want world peace. Yeah, yeah. And it was sort of in that vein. But he what he did was raise the civil rights or the civil violations of people in this country over the years. So it included uh First Nation tribes, it included slavery and various other things, and folded into that was the World War II incarceration of Japanese Americans. That was just one of several. So you throw it against the wall, and in the JACL there was one thing that stuck. And, you know, it wasn't as if the members of the JSL in that convention suddenly stood up and said, Yeah, we could we're gonna do this. There was a lot of concern and fear, trepidation, and um a lot of not understanding what this really meant, except it would be exposure. And it was, you know, you know, I look at that and I think that was a really courageous thing for Edison to do and for the J. E. Cell representatives, delegates at that convention, to vote unanimously on that resolution to say the World War II treatment of Japanese Americans will be our primary issue, our action issue for the next two years to the next convention. So can I ask, at this point, we're in the 60s, has the JSL leadership turned over since the war times like the Mike Masokas and people like that have already No, not really. I mean, Mike was fundamental to a lot that the J ACL did, even during the redress movement, even though he wasn't officially a part of it. Um but the leadership of the JSL, um, it this resolution was introduced in 1970, and the JSL meets every two years in convention. And so over the the two years, chapters would discuss issues that were on the priority list, the action list, and the one thing that stood at the top of everyone, every chapter's list was what was then called uh reparations. And oh wow, although the term was there, it wasn't an issue at that point about doing something that would be sort of a restitution for uh the failure of protecting our rights. It was simply to bring the issue up and to evolve it into a discussion and to see where that went. So, not a discussion necessarily with the U.S. government, but just within the JA community. Yeah, just within the JSL community. But you know, what's interesting is that the community at large, the Japanese American community, was angry that the JSL was doing this. And you know, it was like, how dare you bring this up? We don't talk about camp. 25 years later, the same shame, the same feelings of the quietest. It was very, very emotional. Um, and keeping in mind also that the JSL was complicit in a lot of things that it would rather forget about. That's why it is so surprising that in 1970 they voted unanimously. It wasn't unanimous as much as it was a very strong vote to raise the issue. You know, you have to remember those who enter, uh those who join a civil rights organization are cut from a different cloth. And, you know, you go into a civil rights organization expecting to fight for the rights of people, whether it's your your rights or someone else's. That's your role as a civil rights organization. And yet for us, for the JSON it was really to look at the issue of what happened to us, to try to understand it. And so for the first two years, that was a lot of this the discussion within the organization. So the the JSL has a hierarchy where you have chapters, uh, that's the rank and file, and chapters have delegates within uh a district. There are eight districts in the JSL in those days. So each chapter sends a delegate to the district meetings. The district then has its own conversation about issues, debates, and there were the eight districts would come together as part of the national board of the JACL. There were six elected officers, vice president president of planning, of public affairs, etc. And then you had these eight governors from these districts. They're the ones who had the power, they're the ones who had the rank and file behind them. But I can tell you that within each chapter, there was it was so controversial to talk about camp because we just didn't do that. So what happened was the elders in the organization resisted this. They're the ones who voted no on the resolution, they're the ones who sort of reprimanded those of us who were younger and with some sense of condemnation to tell us, you know, you you stay silent. Our way is silence. We do not this kind of thing. We we don't broach this in the community. So while this is going on in the JSL, the community is really angry, saying, How dare you do this? And the elders were really upset. And you know, in the Japanese community, culturally, the elders have total control. Um, you have to respect the wishes of the elders. It's just the way life is if you're Japanese American, if you're in Japanese culture. So here you get a bunch of upstars, the Nisei, who were part of the JACL pushing this issue out. And honestly, no one knew where this was going to go. So by two years later, the resolution was reintroduced, and it was going to be the top priority of the JACL forever. And then two years after that, at the convention, this is four years four years after introduction, the idea of money came up, and all hell broke loose because culturally you do not do this in the community. You do not demand money. The elders would say to us, first of all, you disrespect us by all this noise you're making. And second of all, to raise the issue of money, we don't do that. So that when the money issue came up, what it did was give focus to this whole movement that was evolving within the J E Cell. And so four years after Edison introduced that resolution, um it started turning. I mean, this was like a hard right turn into a discussion that would become very uncomfortable. At the four-year point, as that conversation came up during the council meeting, it got really heated. A lot of anger and a lot of finger pointing and um having to examine the right of the J A Cell to take on this issue with this controversial spearhead on it, when the JA CL's role was questioned, and and a lot of the members did have privately a lot of concern about you know having been the bad guys. But the JSL members were mostly veterans, and so they they had a different kind of chip on their shoulder. And their feeling was, you know, we fought for this country, we gave up everything. And now we're gonna demand that you make it right. And so they were the voice that everyone listened to. Um, but at the same time, the elders in the JSL were NISA. There were no Isai in the JSL. In fact, they were prohibited from joining the JSL. You had you had to be an American citizen. And there was a reason for that as they developed its organization. It was because as World War II showed, the government did not trust us and saw us as agents of Tokyo. And so as the JSL formed 10 years before World War II started, this was already a part of their their lives, the Japanese community, always being seen as foreign. So as they formed the organization, they were careful not to put it into any written document. But it was understood that Ise were not invited to join. And so it was the Nisse who were the heads of this organization. They were the elders, and they were the most resistant to the idea of monetary reparations. But it had entered the discussion, and so by 1976, um, there was a convention in Sacramento, and Mike Masoka, who had been strongly opposed to this whole idea, got up to the the mic in um the Sacramental Convention and said, in the way Mike would say, you know, I've been thinking about this, and uh I think we need to ask for monetary compensation. But I think we need to do more. We need to ask for individual compensation. And that blew the roof out off the convention floor. Okay, yeah, tell me what the distinction is there. It's one thing if you ask for a trust fund, then there's some way to justify it to say, well, I'm not going to benefit from this. This is going to the community. But in the conversations Mike was having with people like Edison, the idea of only a trust fund was such a felonious way of of looking at this this idea. And so Mike, in talking with and you know, Mike was an he was an operator. He was born and bred in, I mean, he's he was from Utah, but he spent most of his life in Washington, D.C. So he thought like a politician, and he saw that, as he told me later, um, he realized that we would never win this fight. So as long as we're going to get slaughtered, we should do it with honor and dignity for the right reason. And that would be individual compensation. And so the JECL adopted that position and was really um an agent of change in the community. There was still a lot of resistance. And then in nineteen seventy-eight, um at Salt Lake City, I was appointed to head up the national J E S L Redress Program. Wow. I you know, I was a newcomer to the JSL when I was appointed the the chair of The most important committee of the organization, quite honestly, throughout the Gavinch floor, people were saying, Who the hell is John Tateishi? Who is this kid? A kid, I was, I think, 46, 47. But in terms of the leadership of the JSL, I was inexperienced, which is true. But and I had only been a J A CL member for three years at that point. Wow. But I, you know, when I joined the J A CL in 1975, um I challenged the the Northern California district um for being really ineffectual in this whole conversation about reparations and accused the chair of doing absolutely nothing. And he resigned. He was angry, and he resigned and said, All right, smartass, you take the chairmanship. I thought, why not? This is the issue I'm interested in. And um so I became the chair of the regional operation in Northern California, and I thought, well, here we are in the Bay Area, the most liberal part of the United States. So let's see how whites view us. Because this was an unknown issue. You could talk to a hundred um mainstream people, whites in in this country, and ask them about World War II and what happened to us. Most of them didn't know, had no idea. And those who did said, well, that was the right thing to do. I mean, you guys were, you betrayed us, you bombed Pearl Harbor, and we're still seen as guilty for all the things that happened in the Pacific. And still pretty much hated. And so my thinking was, well, let's see what happens in the Bay Area, because this is a really good test suit to see what kind of reactions there were. So I started doing a lot of talk shows. Uh, you know, I started with a lot of those programs that air at 3 a.m. on Sunday morning. Yeah. But I would take any invitation or I would beg for a time out of my to talk about what happened to us. And what shocked me actually was that the reaction on these talk shows, the reaction was so vehement, so angry. There was a lot of insistence that we had no right to demand reparations or any kind of reconciliation of what had happened to us. And so the message I realized had to be that we were American citizens. We were here legally, we were born in this country, we were like any other Americans, but because of the way we looked, and for no other reason, we lost our rights, completely lost all of our rights, and were imprisoned without trial, without due process, and imprisoned for three years, and then given 25 bucks per family to go home. The man who became the president at the Salt Lake City Convention was from San Francisco. So he knew of my work and he appointed me to chair the national committee. It was the plum. You know, it was always given to someone with a lot of respect within the organization. So the question that went around is who the hell is John Tateci? was really uh a serious one. Like, I didn't know if people were going to follow me and where I led this effort. My thinking was all right, we've talked now for eight years about this thing. And approaching the convention, I had convinced the man who was the chair and would become the president to appoint me, um, that what we needed was some kind of framework to create a campaign. And I said I suggested to him uh it would be useful if you develop some guidelines, had it have your committee meet, develop guidelines, and that would be the focal point of the conversation at the next convention. And those and the guidelines only had two things on it: $25,000 per person affected by the government's orders, and the creation of a f of a uh federal trust fund, an educational trust fund. And there was a lot of political thinking being on the. No, we thought about there were going to be three points. Um, but we left it at two, left the apology out, because what we felt was that what will happen is if the Congress gets this in legislation, what they'll do is strike out the first two and uh keep out the apology. They will never apologize. And so the only way to say no to the compensation is to say no to all of it. Yeah. And so I decided that it was time to do something. And so I wrote a press release as soon as I got appointed as the national chair and sent it out to the wire services to say that on behalf of Japanese Americans, the J E Cell is demanding $25,000 and the creation of a trust and trust fund for the loss of constitutional rights during World War II. And I knew from my experience in the Bay Area that that press release was going to raise hell all across the country. But that, you know, I'm to me that was important to do because you can't fight the aggressors against you unless you know what they're angry about. And for them, it was a vague thing until we demanded the money. Until that happened, the media ignored us completely. But the minute we said 25,000, suddenly it was on the front pages of papers across the country. And it was running in the news on evening television, and it was seen completely in a negative light. Um the only, ironically, the only newspaper that gave us a positive review in those first weeks was the Orange County Register in the bastion of conservatism in California. And it's because they saw it as a libertarian issue. And, you know, the thinking of the editorial was that of course you don't deny Americans their rights. Even though we don't like these people, they're still Americans. And it was the first step, and it was part of the argument that we would have to carry across the country. Yeah. So now that this argument is out there, what's the next step? Do we go straight to Washington? Are we doing a grassroots thing? Yeah. Well, what happened for us was that uh I appointed a committee and um had a meeting shortly after the convention. Uh, it was in December that we met. And the purpose of the meeting, I said, would be to come up with a legislative strategy. First of all, we would have to decide are we going to file a legal case against the government or do this legislatively? Our feeling was let's go to the Congress. It was the Congress that screwed us. And we need to go to the Congress and make them make it right. And uh, we were all absolutely convinced of that. And so we started talking about how we would design this bill until one member of my committee said, hey, you know, uh, we're ahead of ourselves here because we need the Japanese American members of Congress to tell us if they're going to support us. And so there were four members of Congress, Danny Noer, the senator from Hawaii, Spark. Medal of Honor winner. Yeah. Spark Matsunaga, um, the junior senator from Hawaii, Norman Minetta, who became part of the Clinton cabinet and George W. Bush's cabinet, and newly elected Bob Matsui from uh Sacramento. And so we asked for a meeting with all four. Um, and in that meeting, we presented our proposals. There were three proposals we presented. And when you walked in the doors, had they already heard all of this, or is this news to them? They were all J Cell members. Okay. They had all been following this issue. Um, in fact, we met in Inua's office in the Capitol. Um, and as I had never met him, and as we walked in, he looked at me and said, Oh, you're who in the hell is John Tateishi? And what happened was we presented our proposals, and um, we're talking about it, and I was sitting next to Enoa and was really struck by how this man, one of the most powerful members of the Nazis Congress, was being so timid about all of this. He wasn't, of course. He was digesting what the thinking was among his colleagues in Congress, mainly Norminetta. And so after we were debating this for a while, I know said, Have you fellas ever considered a federal commission? I was disappointed because I didn't want a federal commission. You know, to me, this is a battle we're gonna fight straight up. And everyone says we're gonna fail. There's no way you can get the Congress to approve this kind of legislation. And so my feeling was, you know, the hell with a commission. Let's do this. Because the commission would be delays or a commission would be. Okay. And so what I know explained was that you get a federal commission appointed by the president and the Congress with the members, um, and they do a study, an investigation of the circumstances that led to what happened to us, why it happened. And if warranted, the commission would issue recommendations to remedy the wrong. And he said, you know, if you do this right, you could have hearings. Um one in DC, you you definitely need the DC here. But he says, you know, you can also take the hearings to the community. And in the larger Japanese American communities around the country, hold these public hearings. That hit me like a bomb. I thought, holy crap. That was that's kind of what everyone was asking for in the 60s. They wanted transparency, they wanted the story told. Yeah, but no one wanted to do it this way because there's an urgency for us, because the Issei, the first generation, were dying off in huge numbers by then. And we knew this would be a delay. So you know it said, so you get this government report, and with a government report, there's no way we can reject it. And he said, the the hearings in the community, if you do it right, you'll get every national network to cover the hearings. It'll be on the news every day. And um the thing that was intriguing to me was to have these hearings where Japanese Americans testified. This would be the first and only opportunity for the Nisei to express their anger, their bitterness, their their pain. After the meeting broke up and we were going out, he's Enoa stopped me and he said, Come by my office later. So I went to see him privately and he said to me, you know, that's just a suggestion. But you guys do what you feel like you need to do. You give us uh the outline for a bill, and we will carry it. Norm will carry it in the House, and Sparky and I will carry it in the Senate. Okay, so in order to set up a federal commission, a bill has to pass both houses of Congress. Right. And so my committee met in March of 1979, and my committee made the decision very reluctantly to pursue a commission strategy. None of us like the idea. You know, we all said things like um, this is a delay tactic. We're gonna have to fight this at one point or another. Let's just start that way. Get a bill, have an honest fight on the hill, and we'll go down in flames, but at least it would be with integrity and honor. And you know, at that point in all of the conversations I was having with members of Congress and um the conversations I was having with the American public, I had changed my mind. I thought, no, I don't want this to be something that fails. I think we have a chance. I really think there's an opportunity here. If for no other reason than this would be a great mechanism to use to educate the public about who we are as Americans and what the government did to us and how that was important for the future of this country. I saw this mechanism, this strategy of the commission as a perfect vehicle for achieving something we could never do on our own. Because at this point, you know, keeping in mind the committee who was still opposed to the JSL, didn't like the fact that we were carrying this issue, but we were the only organization capable of doing it. We had a national network, we had members all over. So my committee decided that we would pursue a commission strategy. And I knew that as soon as we made that decision, we were going to face a total backlash from the community. And that's exactly what happened. There was so much anger, and it was um it was directed at the committee and at me, and uh and I kid Mike Masoka about it, and I said, you know the thing that hurt me the most? People were comparing me to you. You before 1942 and me now. And I said, that really hurts. And you know, I had that kind of relationship with Mike at that point that I could kid around with him. But there was just total anger, and I should point out that the majority of JACL members were angry and opposed to this strategy. So my committee's decision wasn't the final um decision. It had to go to the national board. And I worked, and and the director of the organization, he and I worked with the president to kind of manipulate how the meeting could be held. And um the national board uh accepted the recommendation. So that became the official position of the JECL, this strategy of the. And that was the green light for the the legislation that you guys had drafted to be sent to those four members of the United States. Right. And so I presented the legislation to the four Japanese American members and said, this is uh what we want to pursue. They wrote the legislation, and uh within a year it got passed. Just it was phenomenal. But you know, it had a lot to do with Norminetta. Um, he had a lot of power at the time in the House. And I was at that point, I was in DC a lot to lobby. And um my lobbying was, you know, when you when you lobby, you do these scorecards. Those who are totally against, don't waste your time. Those who are completely in favor, don't waste your time. You don't need to talk to them. It's that sort of in-between. But mine was the in-between on the Republican side to break down a lot of the resistance and the no votes enough to be able to get this bill passed. Um, but Normanetta and Bom Matsue did an incredible job of convincing a lot of their colleagues, and Norm was powerful enough that he could actually threaten members with uh political payback. And so he got the votes to get this passed in the House, and the House is always the more problematic of the two houses. Inowa and Matsunaga, they got theirs passed right away. Um and so once the the commission was passed, it was actually Jimmy Carter signed the bill in the waning days of his uh administration. He had already lost the election to Reagan. And so Carter and Enoa were very close. And uh so Enoa pushed hard to get the bill signed by Carter. He didn't want to leave it to Ronald Reagan. Oh, he thought he'd veto it. Yeah, I mean, you know, none of us wanted to leave it to Reagan. Reagan was an obstacle, and we knew that. Um and so Carter signed the bill. Reagan agreed to carry out the almost pro forma, the early parts of the commission functions, which is to establish it, appoint its members, and let it start functioning. Because the money was in the legislation um to uh for the commission to function. And so the commission formed and um in 1981, in the early summer, started holding hearings, starting with Washington, D.C. And that was just the bigger big Whigs wanting to have their name on it. Uh yeah, very sort of meaningless speeches. And then the the real crux of the hearing, starting in um Los Angeles, three days in LA, three in San Francisco, three in Seattle, um, and three in Chicago. Okay, yeah. So set the scene for like LA as an example. Where were they held? What was the room like? It was in a government building with an auditorium, and um not large. The the room would hold maybe 500 people, maybe more. Um, but it was packed. And uh on at the front on the stage were the commissioners representing the United States government, and um in front of them were the witness tables. The chair of the commission was a woman named Joan Bernstein, who had been uh legal counsel for HHS and uh an old veteran of Washington politics, tough as nails, um, nicest person, but boy, I you know, I dealt with Bernstein a lot. And um there was Arthur Goberg, former UN ambassador. There were former members of Congress who had since retired from Congress, and mainly officials. There was only one sitting member of Congress on the commission, and that was a man named Dan Lundgren, um, representative from the Long Beach area, Southern California. It sounds like the commission was not uh did not have uh Japanese Americans on it. These were representing We had one Japanese American and uh a guy named William Madutani, who was a judge in Pennsylvania. We had argued to get one Japanese American on the commission because they needed someone who personally understood what the experience was like in the conversations they would have. And um it was interesting because our intent was to have an inside man, because I needed to know what was going on. And so we we decided on Bill Matatani uh among a lot of uh prominent Japanese Americans across the country. Some of some names were suggested, but um everyone begged off and said, I'm not the right person. Matatani was one person we really wanted. Um and he he agreed to have his name submitted. And uh he was appointed out of nine commissioners, he was the only Japanese American. Mike Monsoka and I had lunch with Bill to talk about what he was going to be doing, and we It's sort of a general conversation, not really specific about anything. And then at the end of the conversation, Bill said, looks to me, and he says, John, until the commission finishes its obligations, this is the last time you and I will talk. Mike. Mike jumped out of his seat and said, What the hell do you mean? You're inside man. And Bill said, I'm no one's inside man. Ah, a man of integrity. I love it. Yeah. And I was a bit befuddled by it, but you know, I knew Marutani. He was a tough, tough guy, uh, total integrity. And I understood what he was doing. So I, over the course of the next two years, as the commission was doing its investigations and talking about what kind of reparations they would recommend, uh, I talked to every commissioner repeatedly about a lot of this. The only one I never talked to was Bill. But I knew from my dealings with Bill within the sort of close quarters of the J Cell that he and I had pretty much a similar view. I wasn't worried about him selling a short at any point. This is not a guy to be messed with. And yeah, I mean, he was a judge. He understood that if you're going to pay redress to somebody for an injustice, it has to be meaningful. And in a committee meeting we had had um when we talked about compensation, Bill and I were the only ones who had the same number. Everyone else was below us in terms of how much they thought we should demand. Bring us back to these hearings. So we're in LA, we're in Seattle, we're in Chicago. Packed auditorium, what happened? Joan Bursting was there um for the first hearing. She opened the hearing, and one by one, the Nisse got up to testify. At first, people were really angry that the commission strategy was something that we had chose. And then they were angry that they were going to be forced to testify. And I would tell people, you're not being forced to testify. You don't testify if you don't want to. You only do it if you're allowed to. And then as the hearings got closer, the Nise were demanding that they be put on the witness list. And, you know, a lot of the personalities came out because so often someone would come up to me and say, you know, John, I'm an important person. You need to have me on that witness list. It was sort of a drama of human character coming out through a lot of this. But the there were only so many witnesses that could be heard, just in terms of how much time they could speak. So the hearing, the witnesses started talking, and one after another, they got up there and told these incredible stories of what they had experienced. And um I realized this was going to be really hard. And because I was instrumental in the decision of this strategy, I felt like I had an obligation to sit through all the hearings. But I have to tell you that I couldn't do that. I mean, every now and then I'd have to take a break and go outside and sort of regain my composure. Yeah, and it's the only time in my life I've ever seen Nisei Men cry in public. Whoa. And, you know, regardless of all these other things that had gone on in our lives, in the Japanese community, you know, that there's this thing about stoicism. And in fact, that's true, because if you're a male, you're raised not to show your emotions that way. I remember when I was about 10 or 11 years old, I had I was at a playground and um got hit by something and ended up with 11 stitches in my head. The only thing I kept thinking is, you can't cry. Do not cry. It's not allowed. Okay. So in this commission meeting, you see men breaking down as they tell them. Yeah, me sobbing, some of them. And it was really difficult. I felt guilty at first and thought, what am I putting them through? But as I heard more and more stories being told, I realized that this is having an impact both on them, the people, the witnesses, and on the commissioners having to sit through all of this. Yes, let me ask you when these witnesses came up, you guys had chosen who was going to be put forth. Uh, what was the focus? Were you going for a focus in time, focus in experience? Did you want the most horrific experiences? Did you want the most general experiences? Did you want camp experiences versus assembly center experiences? All yeah. Well, I worked with I worked with the commission staff on developing the witness lists. And what they were interested in was hearing uh the different kinds of experiences we had undergone through the camp, the whole World War II episode. So there were those so-called volunteer evacuees. There were veterans, there were those who resisted, um, and those who were angry in the camps, uh, some people who took part in riots. Um the the probably some of the strongest voices were the veterans who were proud of their their having done what they did. And these are veterans, those who had volunteered from the camps. Okay, wow. Keep in mind that it was a JA Cell that pushed to have um be allowed to have Nisei soldiers. And so a lot of them came from the camps, and uh whole unit from Hawaii joined, and that's where Danny and Noah was Spark Matsunaga. Um and so these witnesses these soldiers were testifying, they were testifying about their experience before they joined the armed forces, or uh why would you have a veteran testify? Well, one of the things that was really important was for them to make the statement about loyalty that not only did they give up everything, their education, there in the some were in the middle of university educations, others were just starting jobs, and they gave all that up and went to camp, did not resist the government, and having lost everything, the government then comes in and offers them an opportunity to show their loyalty by volunteering for the service. You can imagine there were a lot of Nisei men who just told them, you know, go to hell. There's no way. You let my family out and I will serve. And they became resistors. The majority said, okay, this is an opportunity to free our people from these camps. So they volunteered for the military. It was that the commission wanted to hear from these soldiers about why they did this. What would what would what would make them want to do something so absurd, having lost everything, to say, I'm going to go die for my country, even though my country screwed me. And so it was the commission staff under the directions or directives of Bernstein to try to get a sampling of a lot of different experiences. And it wasn't just Nisse. I mean, there were panels of psychologists talking about the uh the impact of that experience on our lives as a community. Um there were lawyers who talked about the panels of lawyers who talked about the legal implications of what happened. But mainly it was the individuals who went through the experience talking about what they had given up. And there the incredible thing is almost every one of them said, but I still believe in America. This is my country, and I believe in the ideals, even though I'd lost all of those. It was heartbreaking. It was really uh very tearful and painful to hear one after another. But, you know, there were three days in LA, San Francisco, Seattle, Chicago, and the commission worked to try to get something that would give them a sense of the shape of the World War II experience of Japanese Americans. So the selection were based on experience. Um, but I kept saying what's really important is that you let individual individuals talk about what their experience was like. You need to have the community talk. And they kept that in mind, and so it was all very personal. And uh so these hearings took place around the country. And by the way, the Elliott tribe in Alaska what had been brought onto our bill last minute, and uh I had no idea. These are Native Alaskan tribe from the um Privalov Islands, the Eluts. And Inora approached me one day and he said, Look, um, they went through a similar kind of experience, but we need Ted Young to uh get his Republicans um to support us, and so it was because we wanted the Republican vote, and uh these were people who would get us that vote. But you know, they deserved it. I mean they went through a horrific experience, and so these hearings took place, there were two up in Alaska, um and once the hearings were done the the commission staff did its research, put everything together, and came out with a report titled Personal Justice Denied, which came out in 1983. Um a 400-page study about what had happened, how it happened, and where the failures were. And you know, they it talks about racism, it talks about uh hysteria, talks about a lack of political will, political leadership, and written was a pretty strong indictment of the government. What was interesting is that Inova and I had talked about this, and he said if you let the the report come out on its own without anything else, that in itself will get national coverage in the news. So we made a deal with the the uh commissioners that we wanted to delay the recommendations for three or four months. And so uh the report came out, and as Enoa predicted, it was national news. And um it cited a lot of the failings of the government in protecting our rights as Americans. So that came out, and then about four months later, the recommendations came out, and it didn't quite fit what we wanted. Yeah, so what were their list of recommendations? Um they came out with a recommendation for $20,000, the creation of the creation of a trust fund, and an official apology by the president. Oh, so that sounds like exactly what you guys asked about. Exactly. Well, you know, we we our figure, J Cell, was $25,000. Um and I used to have debates with different members of the commission. Arthur Goldberg, for example, said, What are you talking about, $25,000? You should demand $50,000. You need to go lobby the the rest of my colleagues and tell them you want $50,000. But basic haggling, you start high? Yeah, but you know, I mean, there's also this thing about political reality that you take it up there and um at that level and it gets turned down because it's too much money. And so I think it all came down to a meeting I had with Bernstein, where she said, um, we're about to release the recommendations. I just wanted you to know that it's not going to be 25,000. And I said, How much are you going to recommend? She said, 20,000. And I asked her why. And she said, because we don't want anyone to think we're under the thumb of the J E Sale. I said, easy, Jody. Why don't you recommend 30,000? Then people will know you're really not under RF. She gave me that look of, oh John, don't be stupid. So the the recommendation was $20,000. We had made a statement that we would accept whatever the commission recommended. There were other things going on. I had read so many of the documents that the commission staff was going to be looking at. There's no way you could go through those documents and say, oh, it was justified. There's so much manipulation and so much lying that it was clear this was purely a racist act. And these documents, you put them all together, they all but say that. And so I knew that whatever the commission staff found, we were okay. I'm willing to stick my neck out there and say, I'll accept whatever the recommendation or the findings are. Yeah. So their recommendation comes out to you present it to your people at the JCL, or what was the reaction? Um, yeah, the our official position was we issued a public statement saying we re we accept the recommendations. And that we had already said we're going to use the language of the recommendation as the language of the legislation. Verbatim, we would take the recommendations out and put it. One thing that was important was I was lobbying to put the money figure at the top and sort of hide the apology. Put it third because, you know, there's a 25,000, 50,000, whatever, and then there's 1.2 billion of a trust fund. Whoa. And then an apology. We wanted the apology. That was really important. But we didn't want to come out with it at the very beginning because Congress, it's too easy. Politicians will always take the easy way out, and they would apologize and say, okay, it's done with. Forget the money. But so I was arguing for the money first, and then the trust fund and apology. And then called me and said, he wanted to talk to me about this. And he said, You're going about this the wrong way. You need to have the apology at the top. And I argued with him. I said, you know, I defer to you on everything, but you're wrong on this. It's got to be the money. And he got a little frustrated with me after about 15 minutes of debating. He says, you know what? Go away, have a glass of wine tonight, come back and see me tomorrow. Which is what I did. And when I went to see him, I said, You're right. I understand what you're saying. The point was you put the apology first. So with the separation of the findings from the recommendations, if the Congress accepts the findings, which they did, it officially went into the record of the United States government. And it this was the Congress that accepted the truth of those um the findings of that report. If you accept the findings, how can you reject the recommendation? Because if you're you accept that there was manipulation, racism, all the things that were unnecessary done to this group of citizens. And then you come out with recommendations that have at its head an apology for all the wrongs that were done. You can't say, okay, we accept that these facts are valid, but we don't apologize. It wouldn't work. It was a whole strategy. So I turned it around and started lobbying the members to put the apology first. And they all call on right away. And so the recommendations as they came out was for an apology by the Congress and the United States President, $25,000 or $20,000 compensation, and the creation of a federal trust fund, educational trust fund. And um that was what we took, the language of that, and put it into legislation and introduced, had a bill introduced immediately by Normanetta in the House and Danny Noir in the Senate. That went through different iterations. And finally, um, in I think it was in 85, I was talking with the legislative director in Normanetta's office, a guy named Glenn Roberts. And I said, you know, Glenn, that last bill, it had like a 20-word title to encompass what this was all about. You know, Commission on Wartime Relocation and Interment of Civilians. I said, it's such a damn long title, and it's it has no appeal. And he agreed. He said, you know, I want to do something short, something put to the point. And we thought the perfect thing, of course, is the Civil Rights Act, but that's not what this was. Then and then uh I came to his office one day, and uh he said, I have the language, the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, and that's what it became. And that was the bill that Ronald Reagan signed. What was interesting. Introduced the bill. Tell me about the process of getting it passed. What were you doing? I guess first, as you told us before, when you started this campaign in the Bay Area, the American public was absolutely opposed. So was there any effort to do public communications at this point? Oh, yeah. Most of my free time, I was flying around the country to speak to audiences or um going on radio or television to do call-in programs. I love the call-in programs because one thing about the American character is as long as their face isn't showing, they'll say anything. They'll give you the worst of what they have. And that to me was the most useful because they could throw stuff like that, you know, on a radio call-in. They, I mean, it was pretty violent, some of it. But I didn't mind that because it gave me a chance to address what I knew a lot of people were feeling. This person was only echoing what a majority of people felt about us and misunderstood about us. And my point was constantly that, you know, we're American citizens, so you're saying it's okay to suspend the rights of Americans because you don't like the way someone looks. Is that what you're saying? The Constitution has no meaning. Well, maybe today, but um in those days, people there would be this aha moment where people would say, Oh, yeah. You know, you're right. Okay, and you were the they made you the spokesperson, or were there was there a whole team that was doing these radio shows? How'd it work? I think there were individuals in local areas who were doing this. I mean, what happened was there was no publicity at all. And once this became an issue, um there were radio hosts who were asking for someone to come on board and talk about this issue. We, the JSL, had trained people around the country. We had fact sheets and um uh uh questions that may not be frequently asked, but all always questions that would come up that were kind of tricky. And so we had a lot of information that we sent out to all of our chapters saying that if they give they request someone to come, you need to send someone from the chapter because they're gonna find somebody. And so everyone had the sort of the party line of what this issue was about and could answer most of the questions. I developed these fact sheets mainly from experiences that I had here in the Bay Area and then going around the country. And so we were developing this whole um library of questions that that needed to be answered and with people who could answer them. And so there was a lot of education going on, and I felt From the very beginning, that education was the most important part. My feeling was if we don't get money, you know, that's unfortunate, but to me, it was more important to make Americans understand the injustice of what happened and to understand that we're Americans. I was tired of people saying, you know, where do you come from? Or I would do these talk shows. It was dumbfounding to me. I would do these talk shows that would last three hours. And at the end of it, the hosts would say, you know, that was great, John. Appreciate it. And by the way, you really speak good English. Oh, geez. And I would say, you know, three hours we've been sitting here and you haven't heard anything I've said. Oh man. But this is what we were dealing with for the American public to understand who Japanese Americans were. That we were American citizens. We've always been loyal to this country. We fought for the country. And we sacrificed a lot for the country. That was a message that I wanted them to hear. And I also kept saying, this isn't about the money. Yeah, you know, there's a $25,000 figure that we're talking about. But it has nothing to do with the money. It has money involved because until we put money there, none of you gave a damn. But the minute we put $25,000 on this thing, this label, all of a sudden there's all this panic. Like, oh my God, who are these people? Why are they demanding money? Until that money was there, that debate never took place. And but for us, it's not about the money, it's about the future of America and the safety of the public and the rights of people in this country. And that was clearly the message. And, you know, afterwards, I was happy to see that, in fact, that's what happened. Because I would say, well, you know, the Nisei, they're retired. They don't care about the money. They're going to give the money away to churches, to charities. They'll set up education funds for the grandkids. And in fact, I used to say, I wish there was some Nisei who gets the money if we get it and goes off to Vegas and blows it in a weekend. That would be great. I'd love to hear about that. But that's not what's going to happen because they don't care about the money. They want the principal understood here. And that's exactly what did happen. There's a museum in Los Angeles, the Japanese American National Museum. A lot of that building was built on redress money. So let's back up before people received their checks. Yeah. You were doing that public-facing work and you had the defensive of all the chapters with their fact sheets. Tell us about getting the actual bill passed. How did that take place? It was a complex issue because we started out with a Democrat, liberal Democrat as president, ended up with a conservative Republican who didn't like this kind of thing. Ronald Reagan was an obstacle and we knew it. Although I have to say that at one point I realized that, unlike Jimmy Carter, who had no understanding of Japanese Americans, Reagan's from California. Someone explain to me, what in the hell is an Asian American? No, Jesus. But I thought, well, this is what you're dealing with when you get these guys from Georgia. The difference was, it occurred to me that would not happen in a Reagan White House because Reagan knew the Nisse from the time he was governor. There were Japanese Americans who were friends of his. Reagan knew a lot of the leaders in the Japanese American community because in those days a lot of Nisse were turning Republican. And so it wasn't like he didn't understand us. He knew who we were. He knew what we had experienced. So I thought, well, it's not all lost with Reagan. So when the bill the bill got introduced as quickly as we could get it in there, it went through two or three iterations, uh, ended up as a Civil Liberties Act of '88. Um what happened was that um the Republicans in the House gave us the strongest resistance, and um Bob Matsui made it a mission to strong arm as many Republicans as possible. So we had a team of lobbyists working. We would report to um Norminetta to let them know where we were on our count. I didn't do much lobbying in the Senate because Danny Noah and Spark Matsonaga said, you need to concentrate on the House. We'll take care of the Senate. Yeah, so what was the lobbying like? Was it people who knew nothing about it and you were purely educational, or did you have to make some kind of bid and promise? Or what was the there were a lot of um legislators who resisted this on principle because they did not believe in reparations. Because in their minds, you give it to Japanese Americans and there is this huge population of African Americans out there. You can't open the door. So it wasn't so much they were fighting us, they were fighting the concept. And um plus they were fiscal conservatives, plus they were they were civil rights and they they were not in agreement with civil rights as uh a legislative agenda. And um they felt that the civil rights movement got bulldozed through the Congress, and um they were not happy about it. They didn't like the fact that we were there demanding basically equal treatment when in their minds we had some kind of role in causing our own misery. Um so it was a matter of, you know, when you work congressional offices, you always start with the lowest level aide. The kid who came from the hometown because his uncle knew someone who knew the member. So you get this kid who doesn't doesn't know anything, and you have to work your way through that strata, get past this kid and get to um the legislator, director, or the chief of staff. And then you talk to the member. There's some dues paying. Um and it's hard grinding work. What do you think based on these are fiscal conservatives, they don't want to open the door to reparations at all? What was the tipping point? What helped them to vote? A lot of a lot of them had no understanding of what happened and why it happened. You know, we even with this report, this 400-page report, I would turn to a certain page and say, you know, Congressman, read that. It'll tell you what and they all had this report. Every member got a copy. And they wouldn't want to read it. So I would summarize and try to get them to understand that um this is a really important issue for the nation. What I realized as I was arguing these points, they didn't give a damn. They didn't like me sitting there because I wasn't white. And this is, and you know, in their mind, they you're either part of mainstream or you're part of that community that demands things. And very narrow-minded in their thinking. Yeah. And so they would see me as part of that other group that was demanding something that felt like we're owed something. And I would say to them, you know, we don't care about this stuff. We don't care about the money. It's about the integrity of the Constitution. That's what we're fighting for. To them, that was highfalutin' words for nothing. And so I would, my role, I felt, was to break down the resistance and to report to um Minetta or Matsui to say, you know, I just saw Congressman so-and-so. You might want to take a shot at him. He's really weakening. And they would go in, and Bob Matsui was almost vicious in his demands. And Norminetta, by virtue of being Norminetta, had so much respect that all he had to do was make a phone call and say, Hey, Charlie, I understand that you have some questions about this. Why don't we have lunch? And then we'd get the vote. And so it was breaking down the resistance so that Bob or Norm could go in and get the vote. And um, you know, there were a lot of people trying to help out on this. Uh, we weren't being distracted by silly things. Um, we were together as a community for the first time. And that was true through the last three years of the redress campaign. It made a huge difference. And so the lobbying was effective, the votes came through, and Reagan signed it. What was the reaction of the nation and the Japanese community directly after that? Well, the nation was surprised, um, but it was hailed as a good thing to have been done, and really gave a lot of praise to the Congress for doing having the courage to do this. Because no one had ever tried this before because it was considered impossible. Because what it would require is a Congress to apologize. When has the Congress ever done that? Oh, so tell me what how did what form did that apology take? It said that the the president um on behalf of the United States government would apologize or issues an apology to those affected by um the government's treatment. And those of us who got representation's money, it was accompanied by a letter. In my case, it was um George H.W. who signed the letter. And it it has the language in there on behalf of um the American public and blah, blah, blah, you know, and the apology and words of encouragement. Um, what was the community's reaction to the apology part? Oh, everyone was ecstatic. And um I'll tell you what made a big difference. After 9-11, at that point, I had agreed to run the JSL as uh its director. I flew immediately to Washington and was lobbying members, I was lobbying members of Congress about things they were saying that were a reflection of what happened to us in 1942. And I in fact, I would tell some members, you know, everything you're saying about those people who you know are not guilty of anything, but who you're not sure, Arab Americans, Muslim Americans? And Muslims, yeah. You know, everything you're saying about them is exactly what was being said about us in World War II. That they're foreign, they speak this different language, they dress different, their culture's different. And how do we know they're not carrying bombs under that weird clothing they wear? And I said, all you have to do is replace Muslim and Arabs with Japanese Americans. This is 1942 all over again. The difference is that for us there were 120,000. We're now talking about a population of maybe three or four million. And I will tell you that you do this to them, you round them up and detain them, they will come to the Congress demanding reparations, and the J E Cell would be standing shoulder to shoulder with them because we know now how this gets done. But you know what was really interesting to me was in the process of going on the airgame. I mean, I had the same strategy, education. You need to talk to the public. So as I was going around the country and I would talk about why it was wrong for people to be so fearful of people who were innocent. And the fact that they dress differently has nothing to do with anything. And I would talk about what happened to us and how that was the same attitude against us, and what happened to us during the war. And invariably there would be someone, and usually a woman, who would call in and say, Hey, you know, we did this to Japanese Americans during World War II, and they demanded reparations. And it cost us country money and an apology, and we were wrong. We can't do that again. And to me, it was everything we had done with the redress campaign coming to a head and the payoff of everything we had done, and said that this was not for us, this was not a personal thing for us, this was for the future of the United States and for the foundations of democracy. And it was very gratifying to me personally to be in the heart of all this debate going on and to be able to see exactly what we had able to had been able to carve out in protecting these the Arab and Muslim American communities because of what our experience led to and what we were able to accomplish. I don't pretend to think that we had a lot to do with stopping what happened, um, the talk of a roundup and imprisonment. But I will tell you, Norm Minetta had an awful lot to do with it. He was sitting on the George Bush cabinet, and Norm used to talk about how there were comets. And he said to me once, you know, John, you could just see them wanting to say it, that we need to imprison them. We need to keep America safe. And all it takes is for me to glare at them, and they won't say it because they know what I went through, what you went through. And so, in a in a way, the country learned from our experience. And yeah, you know, I was really proud of what we were able to accomplish and and what it meant, what it signified for. Yeah, so I wonder then, as closing, what do you think is the message that you want our listeners to take away from this history that you've been telling us? The history of a movement that was so successful, that got its goals, that got the apology. Well, in today's climate, it's a different world. It's much more threatening. It's really important to learn about and understand history and the things that went wrong and how as a nation we've had the courage to make them right. Not all of them. I mean, some of the worst injustices are still there. But at least this country has the ability to put right the things that by mistake or intent that it does wrong. And I think our experience both during World War II and in the redress campaign serves a really useful and vital lesson for those who despair right now at what this nation is. And there's a lot to despair. I understand that. And um, you know, it's going to take a lot to recover from what's going on and to rebuild our country as a democracy. And, you know, we need to show the world that we are, in fact, the best democracy in the world. We are the beacon on the hill. And for that one moment during redress, I felt, my God, that's really true. We are that beacon on the hill. Yeah. And I hope we get there again. Well, John, thank you so much for sharing your expertise. I too hope that we get there again. Spencer, it's been a pleasure. Thank you. I really appreciate it. Season one of History for the Reckoning is made possible by support from the JACL Mount Olympus chapter, as well as generous financial support from the Takahashi Family Foundation and the JA Community Foundation. The music was produced by Patrick Coffin. If you want to support the show, follow us on Instagram at History for the Reckoning. Sign up for our newsletter at History for the Reckoning on Substack, where you'll also find the show notes for each episode, or support us financially through Patreon at patreon.com slash history for the reckoning.