We set up two days for the education of these people because this was a problem: educating Japanese Americans. It's a issue that, they really don't understand the terms of the constitutionality of the process that we went through. And the people that I thought we would have the easiest time, it turned out to be the most difficult. And this was surprising to me. I thought these guys, they're smart enough to understand the Constitution and all this kind of material. They were able to understand the Hirabayashi case. So I thought for sure that these guys would be supportive, but they turned out to be the worst opposition.
Well, there's two strong opposition functions. One is that they thought we would rock the boat. This is a very controversial issue, especially when we demand monies from the U.S. Congress for damages that were done to us. And it would damage the reputation and integrity of Nikkei Americans. That was one point of view. The other one was, you're demeaning the character of Japanese Americans to go after money.
Date: October 14, 1999
Location: Washington, US
Interviewer: Tom Ikeda
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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