Well, one of the fundamental things was to take ownership, that people would feel it was their lawsuit, not somebody else’s. That’s also been one of the problems in the past with legislation. Most of the legislation that was passed on behalf of Japanese Americans was done by others on behalf of Japanese Americans, not by Japanese Americans. There’s some problems with that, maybe it was necessary early on. I’m not sure. But there’s some problems with that because you don’t necessarily get what you want. It was important for people to sort of step in and represent themselves—speak for themselves.
Date: June 12, 1998
Location: California, US
Interviewer: Darcie Iki, Mitchell Maki
Contributed by: Watase Media Arts Center, Japanese American National Museum
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