Omori, Chizu (11/10/2022)

Katherine Nagasawa:

So today is November 10, 2022, and this oral history is being recorded at the Swan's Market Cohousing building at 930 Clay Street in Oakland, California. The interviewer is me, Katherine Nagasawa, and the interviewee is Chizu Omori. This interview is being recorded by the JASC Legacy Center in order to document the Japanese American redress movement in Chicago and the Midwest. So thanks for being with us here.

I was wondering if, could you please start by talking about when you first heard about the concept of redress, and what was your reaction to it?

Chizu Omori:

Well, let me see. It really goes way back. I was living in Seattle, and I was not particularly active in the JA community at the time, but of course, it's not 00:01:00a big town, and I knew some people and all. And I started hearing about this movement for redress, must have been in the late seventies or something around like that. Yeah. And I think that's when there were serious efforts at getting organized for redress.

For one thing, there's a congressman from Washington State. Actually, he wasn't when all this started. His name is Mike Lowry, and my friend Henry Miyatake talked to him when he was a candidate for the seat in the House of 00:02:00Representatives. And Henry asked him, "We'll organize and support you, but would you support a bill for redress for us?" And Lowry agreed to that. So we campaigned for him, and he won a seat.

So Mike is a really great guy, and he introduced the first redress bill, I think it was in 1979, but I mean, a serious bill that was introduced into the Congress at that time. And so the Seattle JACL got very involved, and I know that they were progressive and ahead of the national organization in terms of redress 00:03:00because of people like Henry. Henry Miyatake and Shosuke Sasaki. Oh, boy, my mind. I don't remember too well. But anyway, a bunch of guys, and they were like Boeing engineers.

Henry kind of got interested in all this because he said, as a Boeing engineer, that there were a bunch of Asian American engineers at Boeing. And Boeing would have its ups and downs, boom and bust kind of cycles. And when they were in their bust cycle, they would lay off people and downsize somewhat, and-or reassign people to different jobs and all. And one of the superiors said to Henry, and I'm just boiling down these stories, but that, "Oh, you guys, you'll 00:04:00take anything from us." I mean, I don't know if that's what he said essentially, but that was what Henry got out of the conversation. He said, "You know, you guys even went into those camps and didn't even raise a fuss about it, so we know that we can, you know, push you guys around at Boeing, and you'll just take it." That was what Henry understood this guy saying. And Henry got very angry about that. But then he began to think about it, and he said, "We really didn't do much about it, did we?" And he started doing research. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

For you personally, had you heard of the concept of redress before? And what was your personal reaction when somebody like Henry told you, "Why don't we campaign for this?"

Chizu Omori:

Well, okay. I come from a civil rights background. I went to Berkeley and got 00:05:00very active in the Student Civil Liberties Union. It was a group that actually formed an organization on Berkeley campus. And at that time, the issues were loyalty questionnaires, McCarthyism, and the Big Red Scare. And I think the university at that time was imposing a loyalty questionnaire, or oath, or something like that on their professors. And it was a big deal on Berkeley campus, and some professors resigned rather than signing this loyalty thing. And so that was up in the air, and we were campaigning against McCarthyism. I guess that kind of thing. So that was my kind of political start at Berkeley. And then 00:06:00that was the fifties. And then of course the Civil Rights Movement of the sixties came along, the Vietnam War, the protests against the Vietnam War came along. And Berkeley was a very hopping place in all of that, with feminism and anyway, I remember seeing real Civil Rights icons come to the Bay Area. I saw Stokely Carmichael speak, and James Baldwin, and Fannie Lou Hamer came. And so we all were very active. "We all." The people that I knew, anyway. So the issues of civil rights was something that I was familiar with from early on. Personally, I did not hang out with other Japanese Americans. They weren't 00:07:00radical enough for me. So I had lots of political friends, but none of them were Asian American at that time. This is the fifties and sixties.

So anyway, the question was, "Did I know what redress was, or had I heard of it, or anything like that?"

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah. What was your reaction when the concept of redress for Japanese Americans came up? Because you were obviously very active in fights for other communities' civil liberties.

Chizu Omori:

Other issues. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Other issues, but when it came to your own personal experience and your family's experience, how did you feel about fighting for redress for Japanese Americans?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. And this was in Seattle. And so, well, there was a lot of opposition 00:08:00within the Japanese American community to redress. A lot of people, a lot, I mean, I can't speak about numbers or what, but many people felt that this was not a good thing to do. They felt like, "Why bring up old issues, old grievances, and all that?" You know, "Don't rock the boat," in other words. "Don't make it hard for us again, so that we won't get picked on again." Or, "We don't ask for money." I mean, no Japanese asks for money. We don't do that kind of thing. There was that. And, well, underneath it was all, I guess, a little bit of fear about trying to do something like this.

When I heard about it, I said, "Yes." I mean, automatically, I would accept 00:09:00this. Although I really understood that it's not going anywhere. I don't think we'll get very far, or that we would win or anything. But I just thought, "Well, it's really an educational project to teach the American public about this history, and what had happened to us. And just for that reason, it's worth it to work on this cause."

So anyway, they had a really good group in Seattle. The people who ran that campaign were smart, organized, dedicated. Anyway, I felt like we had a mission, 00:10:00and so we were united in going forward with it. We in Seattle put out a little newsletter. And this is all in the days before computers, or smartphones, or any of this kind of fancy stuff, so it was labor-intensive kinds of activities. But we would keep the community informed on our progress and we would have fundraisers and we'd have speakers so that we kept it alive by involving the community in what we were doing. And then we were doing things like lobbying our congresspersons in the Seattle area, or the Northwest, and letter writing. And 00:11:00anyway, it was like learning politics.

And also Mike Lowry did introduce a redress bill and I think one of his congressional aides was Ruthann Kurose. Ruthann Kurose comes from a family that was very active politically. And her mother, Aki Kurose, was a school teacher, and she was very vocal about civil rights and stuff like that. And so she became named Teacher of the Year and all sorts of things like that. And right now, there's a school named after her in Seattle because of her activism and as being 00:12:00a civil rights activist, but particularly for redress. So anyway, so her daughter was part of the Lowry, his office. And so there was that, let's see, foot in the door kind of situation where we had real access to our own congressman and we could talk to him about this and see what he was doing and how it was going and all that sort of thing. So we had a little bit of a special situation in Seattle.

Also, we had the first Asian American governor in the United States, I think. A Chinese American. I can't even think of this name right now, but Seattle had a nice social milieu in which all of the Asian American groups, the Chinese 00:13:00Americans, and the Filipinos, and maybe Vietnamese who are refugees and all that, they kind of lived in this area called the International District. But anyway, they were all very supportive of each other. So this guy who became governor, I remember he was a lawyer, and he was very supportive of redress. He had came to all of our meetings and did all that kind of thing. So I think that was kind of a special situation, and we felt that we weren't doing it alone. That we had lots of support within the community.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And also your congressional representatives, too, like access to them.

Chizu Omori:

Yes. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I'm curious about some of the sort of civil rights activism, and the education that was happening in the fifties and sixties. One thing you mentioned when we talked on the phone was that there was also more education around Japanese 00:14:00American incarceration that happened in the fifties and sixties, that contributed to the Redress Movement, like Michi Weglyn's book.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. That came out in 1976.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Or Farewell to Manzanar, or I know the first Day of Remembrance was organized in Seattle.

Chizu Omori:

In Seattle. Yeah. Right.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So can you talk a little bit about the role that those books and events played in maybe galvanizing support for redress, or even for you personally in learning about camp, the experience?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. Yeah. So it was in the seventies, it really got started. Now, I know that they had yellow power movements and such on the campuses down here. I don't know if that was happening at the University of Washington up there because I was not a student, so I didn't know if that was going on. But I think that actually Black civil rights did give us the, what should I say? Made us think about Asian 00:15:00American civil rights. And I think people would say to me, "What about you guys? You guys were in the camps." And I said, "Yes, we were." That kind of thing. So I was prodded by other civil rights activists about our own situation, our own history. Yeah. So I think there was a raising of consciousness, you might say, by all peoples of color because of the Black civil rights movement. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Do you remember reading Years of Infamy, or going to the Day of Remembrance, like early Day of Remembrance or pilgrimages?

Chizu Omori:

I did not go to that one, although I knew the people who were involved, Frank 00:16:00Chin and Frank Abe and those people. And how come I didn't go? Well, they were saying all the people who had been put into that assembly center in Puyallup Fairgrounds, that they were going to go. And I don't know. I may have thought, "Well, I wasn't one of those persons," or something. I don't know what I was thinking. Anyway, but I knew Frank Chin and Frank Abe and Karen Seriguchi and people like that. I knew them. So of course, I joined in after that. But I know that there was a huge amount of interest in it, that thousands of people came out to that, you know. And so I think it impressed on the leadership that this is not just a small group of rabble-rousers or something, but that within the 00:17:00community, that there was a feeling of grievance and awareness of that camp experience when so many people showed up. And so that was a catalyst for more organizing. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Could you also tell me the story about how you got involved with NCJAR and Bill Hohri?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

From the very start?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. Well, because I was active in the Seattle group, word came out that there was this lawsuit and they wanted representation from all the various areas of, well, of the United States, but particularly areas where the people who were incarcerated came from. And the Pacific Northwest was just one of the major areas. So at one of the meetings, Cherry Kinoshita, who was a terrific 00:18:00chairperson of our redress group, said that they're asking for named plaintiffs, that it doesn't really mean that you have to be there for everything or something. Named plaintiffs is just a symbolic thing that our area is being represented by some people. So nobody wanted to volunteer for that. We didn't know what it was. So anyway, so they just sort of chose people. They said, "You be one of them," sort of like, you know? And so, yeah, Cherry asked me, "You be one of them." And I said, "Well, what does it mean? What do I have to do?" And she says, "Nothing, it's just your name."

So about three of us, our names are put on the list of the named plaintiffs on the class action suit of that. And I have to tell you that I was pretty ignorant 00:19:00about what it was. And so I got to learn more because that was a very well-organized group and they had a monthly newsletter and they kept us very informed on what was happening. And I know they were trying to raise funds and all that. So then William Hohri came to talk to us several times over a period of years there. And so I don't know how it happened, but William Hohri and I became kind of like pen pals. I don't know why, but we started corresponding. And so that kept me very involved in the lawsuit. So let's see. That must have 00:20:00been around 1980 or something when they were putting the actual case together.

Katherine Nagasawa:

What was your first impression of William Hohri? How would you describe him as a leader of NCJAR, and what do you think made him a good leader for that movement, and the lawsuit?

Chizu Omori:

Very smart. First-rate intellect and he wrote well. The newsletter was really interesting to read because everything was written so well and all. And it was very serious in tone, like even though it was quite a daring kind of activity 00:21:00but they learned how to do it, you know? I mean, that meant, "What does it take to start a lawsuit of this type?" And everything. And so they got lawyers involved to do. Well, they engaged a law firm and so a very fine law firm, I think, who were, let's just say, veterans of Civil Rights litigation and stuff like that, so that they could present a case that was solidly based on rules and laws and all that. So it felt like, "Yeah, this is serious. It isn't frivolous, or too stupid," or something like that, that it would be taken seriously. So 00:22:00yeah. And I think William had a lot to do with that because he was a very serious person and he really kind of dedicated his life, devoted a number of years of his life to doing this.

And through him, I met Aiko Yoshinaga-Herzig [Herzig-Yoshinaga], and her husband Jack Herzig and lawyer Peter Irons. Other what I consider real movers and shakers in the Redress Movement, the general Redress Movement. And for that, I'm eternally grateful, because those people were wonderful people and also very dedicated. So I was kind of involved in the legislative redress action, what was 00:23:00going on with the Seattle JACL and all that. I would never join the JACL, but I was one of them doing redress work.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah.

Chizu Omori:

Anyway, yeah. My family hated the JACL, so I really couldn't.

Katherine Nagasawa:

What did your parents think about redress? Did they align with one of the groups like NCJAR or NCRR? What did they think about your work in redress, too?

Chizu Omori:

I don't know if they even knew about it. I lived in Seattle. They lived in Oceanside near San Diego and I really didn't see them very much. And I think that if I had been closer to my dad and able to talk with him over time, that he would have been very supportive of all this, I think. But we were not close in 00:24:00the sense that we exchanged a lot of letters or phone calls or anything like that. No. They knew that I was politically active, and so, from way back, so it's like, I don't suppose they were terribly interested in what I was doing. I don't know. But that's what I did. And anyway-

Katherine Nagasawa:

It was a little separate from family?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. Yeah. Rather separate.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah. I just want to check about silencing phones. I think I heard a little ding. I just want to make sure it's not my phone.

Chizu Omori:

Oh.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Do you know if your phone has notifications on, or-

Chizu Omori:

Well-

Katherine Nagasawa:

Do you mind if I turn off the-

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Thanks.

Chizu Omori:

I think I'll just turn mine off too, because it's very loud. I have it ringing very loud, because-

Katherine Nagasawa:

Oh yeah?

Chizu Omori:

... so that I can hear it from any room.

Katherine Nagasawa:

That makes sense.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

That makes sense.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. I'm getting hard of hearing.

Katherine Nagasawa:

The other question I had was whether you knew the other plaintiffs because they were plaintiffs from all over the country, right? There are several in the Midwest. So can you talk about the relationship with the other plaintiffs and did you ever meet with them or did you have to do any work for the lawsuit? Or did the law firm and Bill Hohri do most of that work?

Chizu Omori:

We literally were just symbolic names. I mean, I don't think they asked us to do anything particularly specific. Now I happen to know one of the other plaintiffs from Southern California. No, no, Northern California. Yeah, that's right. Northern California. His name is Harry Ueno. And Harry Ueno was somebody that we, that my sister and I interviewed for our film, Rabbit in the Moon. And so we 00:26:00knew him and he was one of the named plaintiffs.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Did you ever meet the other plaintiffs in DC? I'm trying to think, Nelson Kitsuse or some of the other Chicago ones?

Chizu Omori:

No, we did when the suit was going to be heard before the Supreme Court. So I'm assuming that most of the named plaintiffs were at that. I'm not sure because I didn't know the other named plaintiffs, but they were all invited to be there. So I imagine, yeah. In fact, that attracted, for instance, Gordon Hirabayashi came and, well I knew Gordon anyway because he's a Pacific Northwest person. But anyway, I sat next to him in front of the Supreme Court and Fred Korematsu and his wife were there. So Mike Masaoka from the JACL was there. And I'm sure there 00:27:00were other people that I didn't know or recognize but they were there to hear the case.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah. Can you tell me about that day or walk me through the entire trip. Had you planned to go from the beginning when Bill Hohri invited you, and how did you decide how long were you there for?

Chizu Omori:

Well, now I was notified that there was going to be this thing and our chapter, I think our redress chapter covered my plane ticket, I think, round trip plane ticket and NCJAR, they paid for the hotel accommodations. So it really didn't cost me anything to go. And I think we were just there for maybe three days or so, something like that. Yeah. But we all got together for a big dinner, I 00:28:00remember. And there was a birthday party for Harry Ueno 'cause it was his birthday. And Hannah Holmes, who was a deaf person, she was one of the named plaintiffs, and she was there. I think she gave the birthday party, yeah. And Michi Weglyn and, Michi and Walter Weglyn, were there. And I had met Michi before, so I knew her. My hotel room, I was going to share it with Mine Okubo, the artist, she was signed up for, and she was there, but she never showed up to be my roommate. So she must have gotten, she probably had friends or something that she stayed with. But anyway, she was there to see the trial.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Wow.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

How exciting to be with all of those -

Chizu Omori:

Yes.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Incredible array of people.

Chizu Omori:

Named civil rights activists and fighters for redress and all that. Yeah. So it was a very, it's a high point in my life, so very special.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Could you walk me through the day of the hearing? What do you remember from that?

Chizu Omori:

I remember that they have very strict rules in any of this sort of thing. So we had to wait our turn because other cases were being heard and we were given numbers and we went in and sat down inside. And Gordon was sitting next to me and Gordon kept nodding off. And the proctors, there's people who are walking 00:30:00around the room just to keep an eye on everybody who's seated. And they would come by and gently prod him to wake him up. And it's just little things like that you remember. And I remember that there were a couple of rows of chairs in front and everybody else was seated. And then Mike Masaoka with a whole entourage of people came in and sat in on the chairs on the front. And I thought, "He has clout." Somehow, he got special seating right up front and all that. And anyway, I did not know Mike Masaoka, but you get vibes from that kind of situation. I thought, "He must be considered a big wig to be given special consideration like that."

So it gave me a little insight into what his role had been as a lobbyist in 00:31:00Washington DC. And then when the actual justices walked in, they're up on a, as I recall, it's maybe not right, but in my mind it was sort of raised, you know, sort of? So when they walked in, they were a little higher than us. And they had these black robes on and they had these high back chairs and it's very solemn and very serious seeming. And then very dramatically, Antonin Scalia stood up and walked off the stage or just walked out. And like, "What was that all about?" Apparently Scalia had recused himself because he had heard the case in a lower court and had ruled against our case. So he did not participate in hearing 00:32:00our case. But certainly Thurgood Marshall was there and I think Sandra Day O'Connor was there, and all of the other justices at that time were there.

Anyway, so the government guy -- what was his name? Anyway, representing the government. He came in very formal clothes. Morning coat it's called, I guess. But it's to give the whole thing a more -- what should I say? Well, more drama really, but formality that you have to dress a certain way to represent the government in front of the Supreme Court or whatever. And he starts giving the 00:33:00government's side of it, and suddenly he's interrupted by Thurgood Marshall. And Thurgood Marshall says, "What's the difference between locking all these people up and murder?" And the lawyer is taken aback and he stammers, "What do you mean? I mean, murder is killing," he said. But Marshall just persisted. And he said, "What's the difference? You know, take everything away from these people, their homes and everything else, and lock them up. Well, that's just as good as killing them." he says. Something like that. And it's kinda like, suddenly, for me, it was a real shock to hear this exchange because it seemed almost surreal. 00:34:00Like what is he saying?

But then later our lawyer Ellen Carson, Ellen Godby Carson, said that Aiko turned to her, and she said to Ellen, "Boy, Thurgood Marshall, he gets it," she said. Anyway, I heard that afterwards. But anyway, I've been rereading William Hohri's book on redress called Repairing America and he has that whole exchange there in the book. And I read it years ago and I didn't remember that he had included that. So I went back and read it and I said, "Yes, I really heard this 00:35:00and it really did happen." And just how startling it was that Thurgood Marshall kind of recognized the seriousness of what had been done to us.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I had interviewed somebody in Chicago who was part of NCJAR and she was there that day. I don't know if you remember her, Mary Samson, her maiden name was Omori as well. Mary Omori.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, I know there's several Omoris.

Katherine Nagasawa:

There's a lot of Omoris.

Chizu Omori:

But we're not even related, I don't think.

Katherine Nagasawa:

She mentioned the Thurgood Marshall moment as well as standing out to her.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I'm so sorry. But there was some noise from a cart when you were starting your story. Do you mind retelling that story one more time, just because I think the audio got messed up. By just starting with, there was the person from the government who was giving his spiel -

Chizu Omori:

Fried. I think Fried, I think that was his name.

Katherine Nagasawa:

But then Thurgood Marshall interrupted. Could you start by re-explaining it?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, yeah. Well, it opened with this, I think he was called Solicitor General, 00:36:00I don't know. But he was representing the government and he was wearing what was later described as a morning coat, but some kind of very formal dress, which I guess to show the seriousness and the kind of rules and formality of appearing before the Supreme Court, I guess. And he started talking about it. And anyway, I don't remember what he said, but I do remember that Thurgood Marshall interrupted him and said something like, "Well, what's the difference between." He used a word, but he meant rounding all these people up and locking them up. "What's the difference between that and murder?" And this really startled this 00:37:00government attorney, and he started stammering and he says, "Well, murder is a lot worse. It's killing." But Marshall kept pressing him and saying, "Yeah, but if you take a person and you make him lose everything and all that, and then you stick him in a camp like that, how different is that from murder?"

And again, the government official really had no answer for these particular questions, but he said, "But we really didn't kill anybody." Well, it turns out, of course they did kill some people. We know that. But anyway, he said they were allowed to leave the camps at the end of the war and all. So that exchange kept going on, and I don't really remember every detail of it, but Thurgood Marshall 00:38:00was really kind of sticking it to him right there in front of everybody in a real way. And Ellen Carson, who was our lawyer, she told me later that Aiko Herzig prodded her and said, "Boy, Thurgood Marshall, he really gets it." So anyway, that was memorable because Marshall was sticking up for us in a very direct way.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I remember we talked about this over the phone, but I wanted to ask you again, did you ever feel like the lawsuit had a shot? Or I guess, what was your reaction when it was declared moot at the end?

Chizu Omori:

Well, did it have a shot? I mean, it was a very well constructed case. I felt like, how are they going to refute what we're asking for? That kind of thing. How are they going to do that? So I was curious about what's going to happen here, how is this going to develop? But I'm sure that even the Supreme Court, and we sure know that now, that politics also plays a role in what the Supreme Court does. And I imagine there must have been some alarm at some level that, "Hey, if they win their case, do you know how much it's going to cost us?" I 00:40:00don't know, something -- billions of dollars. And what would it take to reverse, I mean, to refute what we're presenting? Because it was very clearly laid out all of these violations of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and all those things, you know? So even as an academic exercise, it's sort of like, "How? What are they going to do? How are they going to handle this?" Well, they chose not to.

And when it was declared moot, I asked Peter Irons, "What does that mean?" And he gave me some kind of legal answer, which I don't remember. But anyway, they declined to carry the case any further, is what moot said to me. It was over. So 00:41:00it was a disappointment, but the scuttlebutt later was that what it did is it prodded the action in Congress, passing the legislation.That was going to be a lot less costly for the government then had we won our lawsuit.

Katherine Nagasawa:

It seems like all the different approaches, including the Coram Nobis cases, also contributed in their own way.

Chizu Omori:

Yes. Yeah, I think for redress, there were three major actions going on -- NCJAR, Coram Nobis, and then pushing for legislation through Congress. And we really kind of won in the sense that, Coram Nobis, they did manage to vacate all those cases. And then we got up to the Supreme Court, can't go any farther than 00:42:00that! And then they did pass the legislation in Congress. So it was kind of a lucky confluence of many currents going on here that resulted in redress.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And that you were involved in several of those currents too, you know, that you were also lobbying for the redress legislation in addition to being a plaintiff.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, and then I knew a lot of the people involved in the Coram nobis cases, and there were the same people, Aiko and Jack and Peter Irons and all those lawyers, you know. I knew some of them up there in Seattle. And so we were really one really large movement, I mean, moving towards a certain goal. And that's what it took. It took a lot of organizing. It took a lot of, well, I guess they had to 00:43:00raise a lot of money for all these different things, although so much of it was done pro bono and all that. But anyway, the community rallied to support all the movements. Yeah. And that was the, what should I say? Moment of truth for the community. I think that most people have probably thought we don't mean anything, or what happened to us, it doesn't, nobody else cares or anything like that. But I think that by organizing and doing it in a legal sort of way, we didn't do marching in the streets.

And I know that in Canada, I think they did. I think I read that they did some of that kind of stuff, protests and all that. But we didn't. But we prevailed.

Katherine Nagasawa:

That's incredible.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah, one thing I've been thinking about and chewing on is just the differences in the approach between the JACL, the legislative approach and then the judicial approach, and how with the lawsuit, Japanese Americans were more masters of their own destiny because you are the one suing the government and you're not as passive as -

Chizu Omori:

As a class, meaning all of us. Yes.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah, you are. And you're not as dependent on votes from senators or representatives.

Chizu Omori:

All that horse trading, and you know?

Katherine Nagasawa:

And that you're really helping inform what you're complaining about with the lawsuit.

Chizu Omori:

Yes, yes.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So I guess, what's your reaction to that, the idea of maybe perhaps a more proactive versus passive approach? How would you characterize maybe those different tactics and how you feel about each one of them?

Chizu Omori:

Well, they're different, of course. And I can't say that one was so much superior to the other. Spelling out the violations of the laws and the constitution was very important because it was done through the courts and all, and the law of the land sort of thing. And so it spelled out why we were demanding redress or consideration for the wrongs that were done to us in a way that confronted the courts. Well, and ultimately Congress really. Whereas with the redress, the legislative way that they did it, I mean, there was a lot of 00:46:00contention over the idea of commissions and the hearings, and a lot of people thought, "What's the point? Of course a wrong was done to us. We don't have to tell them. I mean, show all of our scars and everything else." They didn't think that was something that we needed to do.

But on the other hand, the way it worked out is because they had the hearings in all these different cities and places, and they allowed ordinary people who weren't necessarily civil rights activists or legal scholars or whatever, to talk about what happened to them and also the grievances or whatever that they 00:47:00might want to talk about. And the hearings were like five minutes each, at least that was the rule. It was violated a lot, of course. But anyway, but they also allowed people to give written testimony that you could write something and turn that in without having to just have a five minute small, very short time to talk about years of grievance. And I testified at the Seattle hearings. Anyway, but what it did for the community is they heard these stories for the first time, especially the younger people. They didn't know a lot of what their parents had gone through because parents wouldn't talk about it. For a whole lot of reasons, 00:48:00they didn't never heard these stories. And so our community was hugely educated by the commission hearings.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah, and then it was also maybe an opportunity for Japanese Americans to tell their own story as opposed to it being -

Chizu Omori:

To express themselves.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Being told for them. Yeah.

Chizu Omori:

Yes. Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I do want to ask you a bit about the hearings, your experience testifying and being there. I think one of the things first I wanted to ask is you helped a lot of Issei write their testimonies.

Chizu Omori:

Well, not a lot.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Or a few?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, I did some of that.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Can you talk about what that experience was like?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. Well, for me again, I mean, I was hearing stories that I had never heard before, and I became very aware of how much the Issei had lost during that whole 00:49:00incarceration period. And then they were kind of silenced because the JACL really did not seem to care very much about the Issei generation. Their whole thrust was for Nisei to show how American they were, how loyal they were, and how worthy they were to be citizens and to stay in the country. And at that point, no Issei could become a citizen anyway, so their main thrust was for citizens. And so the Issei were kind of completely left out of everything until 1952 or something like that when they allowed them to become naturalized citizens. But hearing these stories was like, when I went in, I was 12 years 00:50:00old, so what did I know about what had happened to everybody? But hearing the Issei stories made me realize that some people, they lost their lives, in some way. It really was like a murder, in that they could not ever be citizens, and so they had no power in this country. They had lost all they had worked for their whole lives. Well, not everybody, but most people did. And they were really too old to start over. And so they became dependent on their children, or maybe government handouts, or I don't know how they got by, or out of kindness of other relatives, or who knows, you know what I mean?

But the Issei were just put in a very difficult situation. And I think a lot of 00:51:00them died just having not even close to recovering what they had had before the war. And that their voices were kind of silenced, because they didn't speak English. Whatever documents and stuff they left was in Japanese, so we don't even have access to their diaries or their stories or whatever. And so they're the ones, that one generation just kind of, yeah, they were kind of, I won't say murdered, but their lives were taken away. And of course, some of them were very bitter and went to Japan and all of that kind of thing, too.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And so for the process of helping them write their testimony, were you interviewing them and helping them transcribe?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, I'd go to their homes and, you know, when I think back on it, my Japanese was not very good at the time, but I guess I managed, trying to figure out what they were telling me and with their broken English, they were telling me. But anyway, just kind of pieced together what they wanted to say.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And those were just submitted as written testimony?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Okay. And then can you tell me about your process of delivering an oral testimony at the Seattle hearings? What was your process like of developing that?

Chizu Omori:

Oh, what was I going to say in five minutes? So yeah, I had to think real hard about what am I going to say? Anyway, I thought, well, I want to say something about my family, but I also just really wanted to say how... I have to go back 00:53:00and read that. I think it was pretty good, but I don't remember exactly what I said. Something like, "All three governments, the checks and balances that are so highly touted, all failed us." The legislative, and the judicial, and the whatever, the president's -- I forget the three branches. Anyway, all of them failed us, in that they really tore the laws of the land to pieces in what they did to us. And that, in my case, my family decided to leave this country and my father was an Issei, he was born in Japan, and go back to Japan because he felt there was nothing for him to stay in this country.

And I didn't want to go to Japan. I had never been there. And so I fought with 00:54:00my parents about their decision to go to Japan. Because I was a minor, so I didn't have a say in that. So I was pretty angry, because I didn't -- that's where I understood that, well, I'm not Japanese. I'm really American. And I also felt that I didn't want to go to a country that was so patriarchal, where the men were such, you know. The way they ruled their families, and I'd seen a lot of that. And I said, "No, thank you. I don't want to have to conform in that way." So that was my reasoning, and so I wrote some of that into my testimony.

Katherine Nagasawa:

How did your parents end up in Oceanside then?

Chizu Omori:

Back? You mean after the war?

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah, later on.

Chizu Omori:

I don't know, they just went back to where they were before.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Oh, I see.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I see.

Chizu Omori:

Not to a house or anything like that, that was all gone. The land that we had been farming on became Camp Pendleton, the marine base down there. So, I don't know, my father wanted to become a -- I guess he wanted to have his own business, so he wanted to farm again, so that's why he went back.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So, he didn't go to Japan actually then?

Chizu Omori:

No, the family did not go to Japan.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I see. But he had wanted to, and then...

Chizu Omori:

He signed up for it.

Katherine Nagasawa:

He signed up to go back, I see.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, we should have gone to Tule Lake.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Oh.

Chizu Omori:

But we never did. And I never talked to him about it, my father, never talked to him. "How come we didn't go?" Maybe he didn't know, either. I don't know. But anyway, I suspect that Tule Lake just got too full, and they just said, "Don't send any more people." So they said, "Okay, that's it, no more to Tule Lake." So 00:56:00the rest of us got lucky, and I know of other people who were No-Nos and all that, and they didn't go to Tule Lake. So there was some kind of arbitrary decision made. The whole program -- I've studied all this stuff, and it's sort of like the right hand didn't know what the left hand was doing, practically. Very, you know, ad hoc. I think they would just make policy because they had to or something like that. But nothing was terribly planned out. So, that's why Tule Lake became such a mess. They didn't know what to do with those people. As far as they were concerned they were all subversives.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So when you were delivering your testimony, what was it like delivering it to the commissioners and then to that big audience of community members? What do you remember about that?

Chizu Omori:

Well, five minutes, and there were lots and lots of people giving testimony. So my five minutes, I don't think anybody paid attention to it or heard it or anything. And it was clear to me that a lot of the commissioners were not paying attention anyway. I think for them, they just had to sit there and hear testimony after testimony. So they'd already been to several cities and stuff, so I'm sure just was very routine stuff at that point. Maybe William Marutani, being the only Japanese American on the commission, I think he was paying attention some. But actually there were absences. Not all the chairs were filled or anything. So, it really impressed upon me that bureaucracy is bureaucracy. 00:58:00They chose these people to be commissioners, probably not necessarily on how much they knew about all of this or what, but for various political reasons, they chose these people. And so they chose to be there, but that didn't mean that they cared about what was going on. I don't know.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Even if the commissioners weren't paying as much attention, what about the audience? What was it...

Chizu Omori:

The audience was paying lots of attention.

Katherine Nagasawa:

What do you remember of who was in the audience and what their reaction was?

Chizu Omori:

Oh, community members were there, yeah. I think they actually scheduled some, did they, in Seattle? I think I read some place that they had evening meetings at some places to allow people who are working to be able to come to the commission meetings. Anyway, they had to have extra rooms with the testimony 00:59:00being piped into it, you know, because so many people came. And the press really did show up and cover all of the hearings. So I think there was kind of an excitement in the community. That maybe a lot of them came out of curiosity or because somebody they knew was going to be there or who knows what. Anyway, a lot of people came, and I think that they heard these stories for the first time, too. I imagine there were probably kids who heard their parents say things they'd never heard before. So it was very -- I think the communities realized that it was important and that they were being heard for the first time or 01:00:00whatever, and so they were paying attention to what was going on.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I remember hearing at the Chicago hearings that people were crying.

Chizu Omori:

Oh, yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And it was really emotional. Do you remember any sort of emotional reactions?

Chizu Omori:

Not so much in Seattle. In Seattle, our group, Cherry Kinoshita and those folks, we organized a series of mock hearings and we had people practice what they were going to say. And we led a very orderly series of testimonials and things. And so I don't recall too many tears or anything. I understand that Los Angeles was a real noisy ruckus almost and people crying and people. Oh, and the white 01:01:00woman, Baker, whatever her name was.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Lillian Baker.

Chizu Omori:

Lillian Baker being thrown out and all that. Well, we were spared the drama of Lillian Baker. But we also had Aleuts show up to testify in our hearings. So we heard that for the first time. Yeah, I was sent out to try to find some people because a lot of Native Americans from Alaska, they come down to Seattle. There's a lot of people going back and forth. So I tried to see if we could find some people to testify. We did. I just remember going to bars along the waterfront in all kinds of places like that, trying to see if I can find some 01:02:00people who knew about it or who would be interested in testifying. So that was kind of fun. I did meet some Native Americans and we had people testify.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So you were doing that grassroots outreach then, to try to get Aleut people to testify?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Wow, that's incredible. What do you remember of, was it hard to get them on board? Or what were the conversations like?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was hard, because they... Actually, Cherry Kinoshita, at the very beginning, when we started organizing for all this, she wanted to be very inclusive. And we reached out to Aleut groups, we reached out to anybody who wanted to be interested and show up. So church groups and all kinds of groups. And we started out with lots of interest, but over the years, people 01:03:00drifted away. So it always comes down to a core of people who are willing to stick with it. But I think in that way, though, we informed, through all this outreach, about redress, about what we were trying to do and everybody can participate, and come and join our meetings. And I don't know, we must have met once a month or something. But anyway, we stuck it out for years. And then I think at that point, I think the International Examiner's a little newspaper that was kind of started. And so we would inform the community and the public just generally about what was happening.

Katherine Nagasawa:

That's interesting because I feel like something that stands out to me about the Chicago hearings was they included Japanese Latin Americans.

Chizu Omori:

Oh, yeah-

Katherine Nagasawa:

So there was...

Chizu Omori:

... we didn't have any, I don't recall.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah.

Chizu Omori:

I don't remember knowing about that, even, at that time.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah. But it's interesting how each hearing highlighted a different community that might not have had a platform. So that's really cool what you did to include the Aleuts.

Chizu Omori:

I know that in the San Francisco Bay Area, there are Japanese Peruvian descendants, and actually survivors. I know a few in East Bay. Grace...

Katherine Nagasawa:

Grace Shimizu, right?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah, Grace Shimizu and other people, yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I have some final questions around the legacies of redress and your reflections on the movement. How did you feel when the Civil Liberties Act of 1988 was actually passed? Do you remember where you were and how you reacted?

Chizu Omori:

At the particular moment? I don't remember, but I must have been really startled and [laughs]. Oh, I know. No, no. There was a convention of JACL going on in Seattle when Reagan signed the bill. So some people from the convention jumped on an airplane and were there in time to witness the signing. So I guess that was the moment when he signed it. Yeah, oh yeah. Well, that was pretty exciting, yeah. And then they promptly got back on the plane, back to the convention, and talked about it. And I was there, like I say, I never did join the JACL, but I wanted to go see Mike Masaoka in action because I had never had anything to do 01:06:00with him. But it's sort of like, what is he like in person? And so that's why I was hanging around on the fringes of that convention because it was in Seattle and I was living there. But anyway, so that's why I was there when I heard that the bill was signed and all that, yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So you were with the big... The whole community had come to Seattle, basically, a lot of leaders, right when that was passed.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. And so of course, the community, our community celebrated and we had a big party and everything. And of course, Mike Lowry was still around, so we honored him for being the first to support us.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Were your parents alive to receive redress?

Chizu Omori:

Yes. Well, my father. My mother died very early. She died in 1947, so she wasn't around. But yeah, my father did get redress and his second wife, too.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Do you remember how your father reacted when he received the apology letter and when he got the check?

Chizu Omori:

Well, I wasn't around to witness it or anything, but they were quietly satisfied, I could tell. They wouldn't say very much, but they were pleased. They were pleased. And they knew that I had been working on it for a long time. So I think they felt like that my work was vindicated because it came through with something.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And how about for you and your sibling, for you and your sister? You personally also received the check and the letter. What was it like for you to go through that experience, as a survivor?

Chizu Omori:

Well, I just felt like $20,000 was a token amount, because after all, being part of the lawsuit and knowing how much that would've paid off, this just seemed like peanuts or something. But I felt, "Okay, it's the symbolic meaning of this." That we had done something that had never been done before, achieved suing -- well, we weren't suing, the lawsuit was, but in Congress, at least they recognized that they had done this thing, and at least this will put a brake on anything that Congress might decide to do in the future. That, "Well, maybe we shouldn't do this, because it might cost us in the long run," sort of thing. As a kind of a warning to others.

But of course, one of the reasons why many in Congress did not want to support 01:09:00redress is that it would be opening the door to allow all the other wronged peoples to sue. So it didn't happen immediately, but John Conyers introduced HR40 or something like it, I think, a month after our redress had passed. So that was in 1988, and then nothing happened to that until fairly recently. I think he kept introducing it over and over. But yeah, I'd like to see more action on reparations for Black citizens, yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

What do you feel like were the limitations of the Civil Liberties Act in true repair or true healing? You mentioned monetarily, it was a drop in the bucket. 01:10:00Where else do you feel like the redress movement fell short of what would've been a more full healing process and repair process?

Chizu Omori:

What more? Well. You know, part of the legislation was for educational purposes, and they allocated, they named $50 million for educational purposes. And I haven't followed all this very closely, but they actually appropriated only $5 million of that $50 million, which became that Civil Liberties Educational Program that they had. And I got a letter of congratulations from Senator Patty 01:11:00Murray in Washington State, because we won redress. And I answered her and I said, "Thank you for noticing this," or whatever. "Thanks for your letter." And I said, "But I do wish that you people make sure that that $45 million for education is appropriated because that's what you said you would do, $50 million." Of course, I didn't get a response from her over that. But anyway, I thought I'd prod them while I could. But later on, because they have these confinement sites grants and all that, I think that's all part of the fact that they said that they would have an educational fund. And so I guess that's all part of it. They don't say so, I don't know, but maybe they do, I don't know. But anyway.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I think it's still a legacy of redress.

Chizu Omori:

Yes.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And this project is actually funded through the JACS grant.

Chizu Omori:

There you go.

Katherine Nagasawa:

So it's kind of funny that a project around redress is, in part, funded through the movement itself. But its interesting legacy is the educational projects and community education work.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. We got money from that grant. I mean that we got grants, my sister got a grant to finish our film, Rabbit, and I got a grant to write a biography of somebody who was... She wanted it done, but after second thoughts, she decided she didn't want it done, and she harassed us something awful. So I had to give it up.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Oh no, I'm sorry about that. I did want to talk a little bit about your film, Rabbit in the Moon.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

How do you feel like the redress movement influenced or shaped your own activism 01:13:00or work around storytelling around Japanese American history?

Chizu Omori:

A lot because I didn't pay attention to that whole incarceration experience for a long time. First of all, I was really happy that we didn't go to Japan, so I didn't care about anything else. We didn't go to Japan, so I was just glad. And then you just start going to school and picking up life, which was pretty non-eventful in the sense that I never felt any hostility directed towards me or anything like that. Other people did. They had a hard time readjusting because 01:14:00they got hostility back from the community that they moved into. But I didn't. A lot of urban kids, I think they just went back into high school and all resumed their lives, more or less.

And after all, we'd just gone through a world war, and think of what had happened to the rest of the world, or even the United States. And so I think all the GIs coming back and everything, everybody was just trying to reestablish their lives. Survival was the main thing, so we didn't have time to think about, "Oh, what a terrible thing it was." We survived, you know? So anyway, and I'd 01:15:00say for the Issei generation it was terrible. But for younger generations who could really start their lives more or less, it wasn't so terrible, all things considered. I mean, we were able to go to school and get going again and all that, but this was true for lots and lots of people coming back from the, the soldiers coming back and everybody starting over or starting again. So we didn't dwell on what had happened to us. It was only later.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And in part sparked by the redress movement, that it got you thinking about it again.

Chizu Omori:

Oh, yeah. I guess when I think about why people didn't talk about it, I mean, well, it was very painful and there was nothing they could do about it or 01:16:00anything. And so I think that it was something that was not, I mean, yeah, what could they do about it? Nothing. But with redress, we could do something about it. At least we could talk about it or complain about it and get heard. So yeah, it's only people like Michi Weglyn and I don't know how she got interested in all this. I knew her, but I don't know. I never talked about this kind of thing with her, but I think she was a good friend of Wayne Collins, or maybe she got interested and met Wayne Collins, and then he educated her on all this stuff. I think that he was a major influence on her.

Katherine Nagasawa:

For Rabbit In The Moon, you had to get a lot of people to share their stories, right? Do you feel like people would've been as open to doing that, had redress not happened? If the redress movement never happened, the commission hearings never happened, would the documentary have been made?

Chizu Omori:

Well, I wouldn't have made it, first of all. But I think there were people willing to talk about it if somebody had asked them. I think so. The problem is, the reason why I felt like making the documentary is because even though redress happened, so how many people knew about it? I mean, in terms of the United States? Just us, you know, basically. Because most people... Well, they weren't interested. Most people, I think. And when I talked to reporters during redress, 01:18:00some of them, their jaws would drop and they said, "I just can't believe it. I can't believe this happened," sort of thing. So you had to overcome a whole lot of resistance to acknowledging and learning about this terrible thing that the government had done.

Katherine Nagasawa:

It was almost a general public education effort.

Chizu Omori:

Yeah. And I feel now that younger JA generations, they don't know very much. They're very ignorant about all of this in spite of redress, you know?

Katherine Nagasawa:

Yeah, and I feel like for me, it's like we are running out of time to capture 01:19:00direct stories. It just feels very urgent.

Chizu Omori:

It's now or never. I'm a little bit older of the really young generation. Emi is 10 years younger than me, so she has no memories. She was one year old when she went in, so she has no memories of camp. So she could say, "I was in camp," but she can't tell you anything about it. And I can't tell you too much either, because I was not old enough to understand what was happening.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And like you said, so much of the Issei experience who were actually adults who could really process it, were totally lost so, yeah. I wanted to end today just by talking about the connections between Japanese American incarceration and the 01:20:00redress movement and some of your activism today around... You went to the Fort Bliss for Tsuru [for Solidarity], you're very involved in Tsuru [for Solidarity]. What do you feel like the ties, or do you feel like there are ties between your activism and the redress movement and what you focus on today with your activism for other communities?

Chizu Omori:

Well, I don't know that there's any particular ties because I've always been a political civil rights activist, generally. And with Trump in office, the whole immigration thing, the family separation policy and having to, I mean, kicking everybody back into Mexico, all those policies, Tsuru was organized to address the asylum seeker problems through Satsuki Ina, who actually went with Carl 01:21:00Takei, who was the JACL lawyer to which ones? Did they go to Fort Bliss?

But this is way before the stuff had publicity. She went with him. And so she actually got into an immigration station where she talked to some of the mothers and the small children and all that. And she came back and wrote an article about her experience visiting these kids. And it was widely copied in the media here and there and stuff. So she knew that it exists and what's happening to the families and that kind of thing. So when a pilgrimage to Crystal City was organized, she was part of the organizing group. And I wanted to go to see 01:22:00Crystal City because I knew about it, but I'd never been there. So I said, "Oh, sure, let's go." And actually, that's where Japanese Peruvians, those people, went because they were held at Crystal City. So that's where we met a bunch of those people.

And it was agreed that as long as we were there, we may as well go to this detention center, the largest in Texas, where families and women and children all were there. Let me see, that was from San Antonio, so what was that one called? Dilley or something like that. Anyway, so our leader, great leader, Mike 01:23:00Ishii, suggested that, why don't we make tsuru, fold tsuru, the kind that are folded for Hiroshima and all that, and why don't we take these? And so through the internet, a call goes out that says "We would like people to fold cranes and we will take them to Texas and we will use these to decorate the fences of the detention center or whatever." And we got I don't know how many cranes, thousands, maybe 50,000 or I don't know. More than I can remember. And suddenly it became a movement, you know?

And there is this kind of genius aspect of it, of having a symbol like the folded crane that people can actually make. We had people in San Quentin prisons 01:24:00send us a box full of cranes and we got some from Japan. Anyway, that it was very eye-catching and very dramatic. So that's why, that's how Tsuru For Solitary was born in this one act that we decided to do down in Texas. And we actually went to the state legislature and gave them cranes and talked to those legislators and all that. And then we went to several churches where people were being given asylum.

Small families of asylum seekers were in the churches. So we got to go to some of the churches and meet those people. So in that one trip we just did an awful lot. And it was very exciting. Was it on that trip? Some of us went across the 01:25:00border into Mexico, but I had to do something else. I was responsible for doing something else so I didn't get to go with the rest of them that went across the border. But then they saw people down there, too, on the border. They met people from Africa, for instance. I mean, it's not just South Americans and Central Americans. People from all over are there trying to bust into the United States. So we keep learning things when we do these things.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I'm curious, do you feel like Japanese Americans, we won our own version of reparations and redress. Do you feel like we have a responsibility to support other communities in those kinds of reparations fights, like H.R.40?

Chizu Omori:

Oh, I think so. But I'm just speaking for myself.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And why? Could you start that thought with, "I believe that..."

Chizu Omori:

Well, when you begin to study the history of the United States, it's just so horrifying that how can you not feel that something, we need to acknowledge it somehow more than we have? So I just feel like we should form coalitions with other groups, other peoples of color, so that we could become a political voice to have a seat at the table and have a say in policy formation and stuff like that. That's what I would like to see. That's going to be hard to do.

But I think there's a tendency for Asian Americans not to identify with other 01:27:00people, like Black people and such. But we live here, it's our country. And so it's our history, slavery and all that. Of course, we weren't responsible or anything for it, but we owe it to other members of our communities that were badly affected by policies of our country. So. Besides, if we don't stick up for our rights, they're just going to be taken away from us gradually, even like voting and all those things. I mean, let's face it, there's a very frightened white group that they're frightened of us. And if they had their way, we 01:28:00wouldn't have any power at all.

I mean, I don't want to make it an "us and them" situation, but we have to be realistic that there are people who are worried that they're going to be the minority one in these days. They are. So we should be ready to stick up for our rights, you know.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And then I guess finally, what do you think that the Japanese American redress movement can teach other communities that are looking for repair or redress? What do you think are the biggest lessons?

Chizu Omori:

A precedent has been set. That it is possible.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Could you start by saying, "I think the biggest lessons are..." Just as a full sentence.

Chizu Omori:

Well, the biggest lessons are that it is possible even working within the system, you might say, it is possible that some justice can be retrieved from... Retrieved, is that the right word? I don't know. Anyway, that we do have a constitution, and we do have highfalutin' notions of "all men are born equal" and all that kind of stuff. And we should all work towards those to make those real and not just theoretical. And redress, at least it taught me that a 01:30:00determined small group can get heard and get some redress, some recognition, and I think it's good for the soul to feel that you are not totally powerless.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Do you think for you, redress... What kind of effects did it have on you personally to have the apology and for the legislation to be passed, for your own psyche?

Chizu Omori:

I kind of was estranged, if that's the right word, from the JA community. I think my experience in camp made me feel like, "I don't really like the Japanese American society. It has no place for me. So I'm just going to step away from it 01:31:00and kind of meld into white society." Which I did for a long time because I married a white man and I was active. Well, Berkeley, you could become...Well in my circles, race didn't really matter so much. It was more like how you felt and what you thought, that kind of thing politically and all that.

It just was not until say, civil rights really got rolling in the sixties and such, then I became very aware of Black history and Native American history too. 01:32:00So, gee, what am I getting at here? Was it about redress? What it did for me?

Katherine Nagasawa:

Oh yeah, for you.

Chizu Omori:

It brought me back into the Japanese American community. And I felt like after what we had gone through, we should have more sympathy and more empathy for other peoples of color in this country. And the JAs just did not seem to care. At least it looked like that to me. And I now see that they were just so busy reestablishing their lives that they really... And they wanted to keep their heads down. They were not politically active because I think they felt very vulnerable. We were, and we had been, certainly, yeah.

But also I grew up in the farms in San Diego County down there, so I had seen the way Mexicans were treated down there. Rather than Blacks it was really the Mexicans that were the lowest on the totem pole and mistreated and exploited and all that sort of thing. So there's that brown community too. We have hardly talked about them, but I was aware of that. So it looked like peoples of color, Black, brown, whatever, Native, red. They used to call him the "red man." Geez. But that all of us had a lot in common, that it was white supremacy and white attitudes towards peoples of color.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I think lastly, I just see if there's any questions I didn't ask or anything else you wanted to share -- final reflections before we close up.

Chizu Omori:

That's okay. You said you... You want to a cough drop?

Katherine Nagasawa:

[coughs] Any final parting words?

Chizu Omori:

Oh, I'll take a drink.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I think we'll be wrapping up in a minute.

Chizu Omori:

Okay.

Katherine Nagasawa:

I think lastly I just want to see if there's any questions I didn't ask or any thoughts you wanted to share, final reflections before we close out the interview today. So any final parting words or thoughts?

Chizu Omori:

Well I think that William Hohri and the people who were very active in the NCJAR lawsuit were very courageous and I think what they did was really true to democracy, I'll put it that way. That they were protesting grievances that were committed by the government and they wanted to do it in a way that would connect to the basics in this country and such, and that they cannot get away with 01:36:00violating the systems of the government and the laws and such like that. They can't get away with it. That they had to be held accountable for what they did.

Katherine Nagasawa:

And they all tied it, right. It was like 22 constitutional violations, right?

Chizu Omori:

Yeah.

Katherine Nagasawa:

Wonderful. Well, thank you so much for sitting with me and sharing. You have an amazing memory also.

Chizu Omori:

Well-

Katherine Nagasawa:

I'm so impressed.

Chizu Omori:

You know what? You should have gotten me 10 years ago. I'd have been a lot better.