Well, I think that the commission hearings really moved me. And I, see, I was a witness chair. I started out first by being the witness chair, and I was the person who went out to get the witnesses to testify. And as I got more and more involved at this, well, I became more and more interested, especially when you heard about a lot of the... heard the stories of what happened to so many people. And the stories were so moving and all. ... A lot of the people were willing to write testimony, but getting them to get out there and talk about it, it was really difficult.
And so when we finally had a group of people ready to testify, we had sessions, you know. I mean, a lot of people talk about having their mock hearings and things like that. Well, we had television monitors, and we had a psychiatric nurse helping us, and we had sessions where we would get together and we only had five minutes, you know, to testify. So we practice in front of the monitor, but the first time we got together and we had small groups, I mean, it was so emotional. And I remember, I myself, how I just broke down and I wept and I couldn't talk.
Date: September 11, 1997
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Becky Fukuda
Contributed by: Denshō: The Japanese American Legacy Project.
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