JACCC President Terasawa greeted the DOR crowd and the Kinnara Taiko group entertained the audience with its exciting drum routine.  The keynote speaker, Rep. Bob Matsui, related how his parents were unable to talk about the camps.  Like other Japanese Americans, his parents felt shamed by their incarceration.  But, they and other Nikkei were forced to confront the internment at the 1981 public hearings of the Commission on Wartime Relocation and Internment of Civilians.  With passage of H.R. 442, Japanese Americans finally had an acknowledgement from Congress that it was the government that had imprisoned them and that their imprisonment was not their fault.

Rep. Norman Mineta and Senator Spark Matsunaga sent greeting to the DOR audience via videotape.  Matsui, Mineta, and Matsunaga urged everyone to write letters to President Reagan, because the President’s signature was necessary for the bill to become effective. 

Miya Iwataki honored Amy Uno Ishii and the Uno family by presenting them with NCRR’s Fighting Spirit Award for their tireless work to educate and advocate for Japanese American redress.