cc >> Chris Berry: I'm very pleased
to welcome you to tonight's History Club dinner meeting.
It's my pleasure to introduce our speaker.
Rudyard Kipling once wrote, "If history were taught in the
form of stories, it would never be forgotten."
And if this is true, then as History Club members, we're very
fortunate this evening to have as our speaker Adam Schrager,
a reporter, news anchor, author, teacher, and most importantly,
a storyteller. The story he will tell is set
more than 70 years ago in one of the darkest hours of United
States history.
Thank you. [laughter]
I'll start over. No.
The story Adam will tell is set 70 years ago in one of the
darkest periods in United States history.
It takes place in early 1942, just after the United States
was forced into World War II. The victorious German Armies
dominate the European continent. They are on the outskirts of
Moscow, and in North Africa, they have pushed
the British Army back, almost to the Suez Canal.
The heart of the U.S. Pacific Fleet lies at the bottom
of Pearl Harbor. The Japanese Empire extends
across the Eastern Pacific, from Manchuria to New Guinea, from
Southeast Asia to the outer islands of the Aleutian chain.
Against this backdrop of military doom, the American
president signs an executive order.
With a few strokes of his pen, he changes the lives of
thousands of American citizens, depriving them of their liberty,
their livelihoods, and their property all without due
process. Federal authorities implement
the order, transferring many loyal Americans of Japanese
descent from their homes and businesses on the West Coast to
internment camps throughout the American West.
It's at this point in time that the hero of the story emerges,
to speak up for the constitutional rights of these
American citizens. As Adam will explain, Ralph
Carr, then the governor of Colorado, is that rare
individual, a principled politician, one who's willing to
risk his personal and professional future by standing
up for what he believes is right, by standing up for those
who are being deprived of their constitutional rights.
It is a compelling and inspiring story, one that will resonate
with us today, particularly in an election year.
We are fortunate to have Adam Schrager tonight as our
storyteller. Adam has shared people's stories
for more than 20 years, first with CBS News in London, then
with stations in La Crosse, Madison, Milwaukee, before
moving on to KUSA-TV in Denver, where he became the preeminent
political reporter in the Mountain West.
Adam is now a reporter and news anchor with Wisconsin Public
Television. He is the author of
"The Principled Politician," a biography of former governor
of Colorado, Ralph Carr. His acclaimed book led the
Colorado Legislature to name the new State Justice Center in
Colorado after their former chief executive, Ralph Carr.
Adam's latest book, which he co-authored with Rob Wittwer,
is "The Blueprint: How the Democrats Won Colorado
and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care."
This book has been lauded by the Wall Street Journal, the
Washington Post and political figures on both sides of the
aisle. We are indeed fortunate to have
Adam as our speaker for the History Club this evening.
Please join me in welcoming Adam Schrager.
[applause] >> Adam Schrager: Thank you very
much for having me today. I'm honored to be sharing with
you a story that while set in Colorado, I think you will find,
has no borders. Make no mistake, that while this
story is set in the 1940's, it also has relevance today.
It's a story about the best of humanity during the worst of
times. This is the story about former
Colorado governor Ralph Carr a man who in 1942 said
unapologetically, "if I don't speak the feeling of
the people of Colorado in my office as the governor, then I
haven't any right to be there." At the time, he was standing
up for the constitutional rights of Japanese Americans.
That stand against ignorance and against bigotry
would cost Ralph Carr his political career.
You all will be thankful to know I'm embracing the former
governor's pre-eminent rule to speechmaking, which is
never out speak the bladder capacity of your audience.
I've already had a cup of coffee.
I do what to be sensitive though as to how long I
go because I think you'll find the topic thought-provoking and
hopefully will inspire some questions that I'll be able to
answer after the conversation. I've long said the best part of
my job as a reporter, and yes, I have been doing this 20 years.
I know I look like I'm 12 years old but I've been doing this for
a long time. And any gray is as a result of
covering politicians. The single best part of my job
is that I get to meet extraordinary people who
describe themselves as ordinary.
Maybe it the woman with three prosthetic limbs who comes down
to the state capitol to lobby lawmakers so other amputees have
proper healthcare coverage. Maybe it's the foster couple
that looks after 250 children and ends up adopting ten of
them. When asked why, simply says, "We
loved them all and we wished we could have adopted more."
Or maybe it's the 30-something couple that sets aside lucrative
IT careers to open up a cafe where they serve free food.
You only pay, if you can afford it.
They are all extraordinary people who describe themselves
as ordinary. In September, 1950, Colorado and
this country lost one of those extraordinary people.
A man who I have come to know over the course of roughly the
last decade now, immersing myself in his professional and
personal records and pretty much reading every single word ever
written about him or by him. And I can stand here today in
all sincerity and tell you that I believe that Ralph Carr is
more extraordinary than I believed on that first day that
I met him, in the figurative sense.
It was back in January 2002, and I was doing a story on a
proposed measure at the state capitol to make Governor Carr's
birthday a voluntary state holiday.
In the course of the story, I met a state capitol tour guide
by the name of Carol Keller at the Ralph Carr plaque, which
is a small plaque on the wall outside the Colorado
governor's office. To the group of people that she
had in tow, Miss Keller described a man of conviction,
of dedication and of principle. They are words that, let's be
frank, we don't always associate with our elected officials.
The week that he died in 1950, Colorado's poet laureate, Thomas
Hornsby Ferril wrote the following:
Ralph Carr was a one man crusade,
he wrote, for freedom all of his life.
I've heard it said that Ralph Carr could have gone down
as a great American, known to everybody in every state, if
he'd simply been willing to wangle more the breaks his way
and be less bull-headed about standing up for the
constitutional rights of the underdogs.
Well, Thomas Hornsby Ferril believed they could have their
definition of what a great American is.
But it seems to me, he wrote,
that if we had more men like Ralph Carr along the line,
we wouldn't need to keep puffing up so many other "great
men" to bail us out. Over the course of this talk,
we'll look at why Ralph Carr has been forgotten, and maybe more
importantly, why he needs to be remembered.
Now, it was known throughout the Colorado state capitol in 1939
that the state's chief executive had a temper.
I stand here today sharing with you the story of a man of great
political courage, but by no means, a perfect individual.
No politician was too big, no businessman too powerful to
escape his wrath. And sometimes even the littlest
of things would set him off. His friends liked to tell the
story about the time after a football game that was
played at the University of Denver when the line of cars
to get out of the parking lot seemed interment, just seemed to
go on and on and on. And finally when it was Governor
Carr's turn to leave the parking lot someone cut him off.
You had a 1940s version of road rage.
The governor rolls down his window, and shouts, "You
son-of-a-Beep!" It's the governor of the state
of Colorado. Well, the other driver who is
described through the years as a "large, hulking man," jumps out
of his car to confront the 5'8 1/2", diminutive
Governor Carr. He runs right up to him,
Governor Carr points his finger in his chest and said, "I called
you by your right name, didn't I?"
Now, maybe it was because the man recognized Governor Carr, or
by that moment the state petrol officer was standing behind him.
Either way, he demurred, the governor smiled and they both
went on their respective ways. On February 19th, 1942
Ralph Carr's staff was witnessing another one of his
trademark eruptions, but it was not over anything trivial
at all, and it was directed squarely at President Franklin
Delano Roosevelt. The governor was pacing,
clenching in his fist a telegram that announced
executive order 9066, which starts out,
whereas the successful prosecution of the
war requires every possible protection against espionage and
against sabotage to national defense material, national
defense premises and national defense utilities.
Governor Carr paused and took a deep breath before he read aloud
what he believed to be the most onerous sentence of all.
I hereby authorize, President Roosevelt wrote,
and direct the secretary of war and the military commanders
whom he may from time to time designate, to prescribe military
areas in such places, from which any or all persons may
be excluded. From which any or all persons
may be excluded. Now Ralph Carr knew, he knew
when you got past the formality of this language, that this
was a de facto declaration of martial law on the West
Coast, and it had one not very well hidden agenda.
That was to remove anyone of Japanese descent.
"Now that's wrong," the Governor shouted at his staff, "some of
these Japanese are citizens of the United States."
And in case they had missed that point, "They're American
citizens!" he shouted again. In our recent past, we look at
the example and the memories of 9-11 and the seminal moment
in this country's history. The shock and the fear and anger
the many of us felt that day is real and still present today.
Yet, I believe it paled in comparison to what happened in
this country after the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th,
1941. The thousands of post cards,
notes and telegrams sitting in Governor Carr's collection at
the Colorado State Archives did not need to be written
in all capital letters or have exclamation points at the end of
every sentences to literally scream off of the page at you.
They came from homemakers and businessmen, from eastern
Colorado and western Colorado, from big cities and small towns.
I've had a lot of people who have shared with me that reading
these sentiments in the book that I've written about Governor
Carr is the most difficult thing.
They've have said to me, "You've included too many
examples." "You've over-proved your point."
"I get it already." People were scared,
they were angry, and they were angry at Governor
Carr for his defense of the people they thought were going
to attack them. Those who were of Japanese
decent. "You've over-proved your point,"
they said to me, "move on already."
In response I've told them apparently you missed the point
that I was trying to make. Because in today's society,
we've grown so accustomed to convenience.
We don't like what's in the newspaper, we turn the page.
We don't like what's on the radio, we turn the station.
We don't like what's on TV, maybe we turn it off.
You have to understand that in the early part of 1942,
Ralph Carr, as Colorado's chief executive, did not have that
luxury. You see, every newspaper, from
front to back, was chronicling how the American's were losing
the war. Every radio station on the half
hour and the hour, were broadcasting the names of the
local boys who had either been killed or taken prisoner.
Every friend, colleague and neighbor had a brother, husband
or son who was going to fight, or was already fighting.
And so the critical letters kept coming.
The telegrams kept coming. The editorials throughout the
state's newspapers kept berating him.
And his phones kept ringing. I'm not just talking about his
phone on the first floor governor's office.
I'm talking about Ralph Carr's home phone.
Because, if you can believe it, it was listed in the phone
book. He always told his teenagers
at the time, "The rich and powerful always know how to get
a hold of you, but if you're going to be the governor, you've
got to give the common man a chance to call you after an
honest day's work." Well, they called all right.
He couldn't escape it. Coloradans and folks living
along the West Coast sincerely believed that the next attack
would come closer to home, and that that attack would be
aided by people of Japanese descent.
That is what the government had told them.
That is what the media had convinced them had lead to the
attack at Pearl Harbor that killed thousands of Americans.
Now, the evidence would be secondary and later found to be
sketchy at best, but a court of public opinion had delivered
its verdict immediately. The governor's files at the
Colorado State Archives are teeming with examples of that
fear and that anger. He told one of his college
friends he was being cussed in Colorado almost as often as he
was being discussed in Colorado. People of Japanese descent, if
you can believe this, were called "yellow devils" on the
front pages of newspapers as large as the Denver Post.
At the time, roughly 120,000 people of
Japanese descent lived on the West Coast, many of whom were
American citizens. 2/3 of whom actually, were
American citizens. But those who contacted
Governor Carr did not differentiate between citizen
and non-citizen. We don't want Denver overrun by
the yellow race, read one letter to the governor.
A homemaker from Boulder pleaded with the governor, May god of
heaven speak to your soul , she wrote,
No one wants Japanese here to see our bodies ravished
and raped by the very devil himself.
One farmer sent a telegram suggesting that anyone of
Japanese descent simply be killed.
That would solve the problem, he suggested.
As if the anecdotes weren't enough, Ralph Carr actually had
poll results sitting on his desk from a survey that had been
conducted at the University of Denver.
Across the board, men and women, young and old, educated and
uneducated, urban and rural, answered by a more than
two to one margin that Americans looked more
unfavorably toward the Japanese than they did toward America's
other enemies in the war, the Germans and the Italians.
Again, they did not differentiate between American
citizens of Japanese descent and those who weren't citizens.
And neither, frankly, did Governor Carr's political peers.
For example, Arizona governor Sidney Osborne said his state
did not want to be a dumping ground for enemy aliens.
He wouldn't permit it. Kansas governor Payne Ratner
said, "Japs are not wanted and not welcome in the state
of Kansas." He said he'd call up his
National Guard to ensure they didn't cross his border.
Idaho attorney general Bert Miller proudly proclaimed the
state of Idaho as "white man's country."
The goal was to keep it that way throughout the war.
And Wyoming governor Nels Smith worried that Japanese would
overrun his state if given the opportunity.
Wyoming residents, he said, "Have a dislike of any
Orientals. Further," he said...
and this is the chief executive of the state of Wyoming mind
you. He said,
"If anyone of Japanese descent were going to be sent to the
state of Wyoming they would be found 'hanging'
from the state's pine trees." Even Earl Warren, who many
people in this room would argue is the greatest advocate for
civil rights in US Supreme Court history, the man who literally
desegregated this country's schools, authoring the
Brown vs. Board of Education decision.
In 1942 Earl Warren was California's attorney
general, he had an eye on running for governor,
and Earl Warren was scared. He was asked specifically about
evacuating the West Coast of anyone with Japanese blood
in them and he said, "American born Japanese are
a menace." A menace!
He'd later go on to tell a reporter that our day of
reckoning was bound to come because it was, "Impossible to
distinguish between dangerous and loyal Japs."
So in this environment then, with this kind of hostility,
this kind of fear, you can imagine the kind of reaction
when Colorado's governor says publicly, "To the American born
citizen of Japanese parentage, we look to you for example and
guidance, and we offer you the hand of friendship, secure in
the knowledge that you will be as truly American as the
rest of us." To come from a governor would
have been significant enough, but I stand here today to tell
you that at the time Ralph Carr was no ordinary governor.
Even though he'd only been in elected office just three years,
he was one of the sought after speakers on the national
Republican party circuit. He talked to audiences in New
York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, Detriot.
He was an outspoken opponent of the New Deal, an outspoken
opponent of big government. The newspaper columnists who
would cover him loved the pithy quotes that he would give.
For example, he made the front page of the Los Angeles Times
by telling their reporter that the way to balance the budget
was to stop spending when the money was gone.
He made the front page of New York Times by telling their
reporter that way to save taxpayers' money was to stop
spending taxpayers' money. These reporters loved it and
they fawned all over him in their papers.
He was keeping the company of people like former president
Herbert Hoover, the man who was maybe the second most popular
American at the time NBC radio announcer Lowell Thomas, and the
man who would offer him the chance to run for vice president
in 1940, that being Wendell Willkie.
Ralph Carr turns down that opportunity to continue to try
to reform Colorado state government, but he was being
talked about in the papers as a possible future presidential
candidate. We think in our history not that
many people get mentioned in that sentence.
His political star was rising at break-neck speed.
And then came Pearl Harbor and Ralph Carr's stand on behalf
of Japanese Americans. A stand where he proclaimed,
If the principles of the constitution are not preserved
for every man than we shall not have it to protect any man.
If you remember nothing else from this conversation tonight,
I'm going to read that quote again.
If the principles of the constitution are not preserved
for every man than we shall not have it to protect any man.
It's safe to say that the governor of a land locked
state quickly found himself isolated on a political island.
Ralph Carr believed, as Teddy Roosevelt believed, that there
was no room in this country for what they called "a hyphenated
American." That a country of Irish
Americans, Mexican Americans, Japanese Americans, what have
you, needed to identify with their similarities of being
American rather than highlighting their ethnic
differences. Governor Carr fondly referred to
the Melting Pot of the United States, and said on state-wide
radio just two days after Pearl Harbor, that he personally would
not judge the loyalty of any man based on where their
grandparents were born. He would tell audiences,
"The constitution starts out 'we the people of the
United States.' It does not say, 'we the people
who are descendants of the English or the Scandinavians or
of the French. It says we the people of the
United States." And the point that he made over
and over again, to anybody that would listen throughout
Colorado, throughout 1942, was that he did not believe he
was not standing up for the rights of Japanese Americans.
Ralph Carr believed he was standing up for the rights
of all Americans. If American citizens of any
descent were going to be deprived from their freedoms,
removed from their homes, incarcerated behind barbed
wire and military police with machine guns, without any
evidence of wrongdoing or a trial to determine guilt,
what's to say six months from now, we won't follow them
into that same internment camp, behind barbed wire, military
police with machine guns, and no evidence of wrongdoing,
and no trial to determine guilt. If society allowed for any
American citizens to lose their rights as citizens, under this
constitution, then the principles of the document
that Ralph Carr revered more than any other but the bible,
in his view, would be violated and lost.
"Principles," Ralph Carr was fond of saying, "are as true as
truth and will last as long as God's creation."
Because of that belief, you have likely never heard of him before
this evening. He's a footnote in a time period
celebrated by numerous volumes. You're probably sitting there
right now thinking to yourself the parallels to what's
happening today are quite eerie in fact.
A number of decades after World War II, we are still struggling
with the same topics, we're still asking ourselves and each
other the same questions. How do we balance personal
privacy versus public safety? How do we live in a world
where we know there are people out there who want to hurt us.
It's indisputable. We know they want to hurt us
and we also know they will not follow our moral and legal
codes. How do we deal with the role of
the government and the courts during a time of war?
How should we handle a rising immigrant population?
Yet, I'd like to think we've learned some lessons from our
past. For example, we did not uproot
large populations of Arab Americans after 9-11.
We did not call them derogatory names on the front pages of our
newspapers. And leaders at the highest
levels of our government encouraged us to be vigilant,
but also to respect the contributions made in our
society everyday by Arab Americans.
Yet still we are asking what rights are we willing to
sacrifice, what personal price are we each
willing to pay so we're not scared anymore?
In 2012, without question the world has changed.
The threats are different, but to know the daily sacrifices
of World War II Americans, you'd be hard pressed to say
that Americans today are any more vigilant about winning
a war than those who lived in the 1940's.
Back then, curtailed their use of rubber, they drove less, of
metals, even of certain foods, to aid in the war effort.
And in the case of roughly 120,000 people of Japanese
descent, 2/3 of whom were American citizens, they
sacrificed the most basic thing of all.
They sacrificed their freedom. Today, many people would argue,
through things like the Patriot Act, the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act and Guantanamo Bay, that we are experiencing a
case of history repeating itself while others would not consider
those examples to be sacrifices at all to our basic freedoms.
In both times, good people, people with true and noble
intentions made choices. History has shown that some of
the choices of America's World War II era elected officials
were wrong. Congress, in the 1980's, passed
a law officially apologizing to Japanese Americans
and it was signing into law by President Ronald Reagan.
If you think about it, this country still hasn't officially
apologized for slavery. It passed an amendment
abolishing it, but has not officially apologized for it.
Yet there was not way for Ralph Carr to know this.
He didn't have the foresight to know that by the end of the war
that there would be no evidence of espionage or sabotage on
the part of anyone of Japanese decent in this country.
He did not know the 442nd military unit comprised entirely
of Japanese Americans would become the most decorated
unit in US military history, still, to this day, for
its efforts fighting in Europe. Yet, Ralph Carr still took the
stand he did in dramatic contrast with so many other
politicians of his time. There's a play called
"Inherit the Wind," which many of you may have seen the
movie with Spencer Tracy and Gene Kelly.
It's about evolution and I'm certainly not up here to
talk about evolution tonight, but here's the parallel.
One of the central characters there is put on trail for what
he believes. There's a scene in the courtroom
where his girlfriend comes to him.
She pleads with him, "Just say you're sorry.
Please, just say you're sorry and then, everything can go back
to the way that it was." To that his attorney says, "Can
you buy back his respectability by making him a coward?
It's the loneliest feeling in the world, to find yourself
standing up when everybody else is sitting down."
Who stands up when everybody else sits down and why?
That's really what drew me into this story so many years ago.
And why I love to share it everyday since.
Because, it seems to me that this is the leader that we all
say we want. The one who says, as Governor
Carr did, "Regardless of what it does to me, you may rest assured
I will be governor in fact as well as in name."
The one who says only half jokingly on the campaign trail,
that if he's elected, he will likely become the most hated
man in Colorado because he intends to follow his
principles. This is an elected official who
does not stick a finger in the wind to determine which current
he or she should follow that day.
Now, it wasn't that Ralph Carr was uninterested in what people
had to say. In fact, the opposite was true.
He'd engage anyone in a conversation.
There are numerous stories of men in three piece suits in
the entry way of the Colorado governor's office while he spoke
his self-taught Spanish to farmers and ranchers just in out
of the fields. He hires George Robinson from
the Union Pacific railroad, where Robinson worked as a
dining car attendant. Back then Colorado's governor
was allowed one colored employee.
That person had historically been a messenger.
They would run messages from the first floor governor's office up
to the legislature on the second floor.
Well, Ralph Carr hires George Robinson as an
information clerk. Which means the very first face
you saw in Colorado's governor's office in 1939 was that
of an African American man. Ralph Carr would listen to
anybody and everybody, no matter their race, class or age.
But after he had taken the input, it's safe to say
that he saw his job differently than we tend to
believe our current elected officials do.
You see, Ralph Carr said he did not take his job to feel the
public pulse or to follow the popular demand.
"I think it's up to a person in my job," he said, "to direct
public opinion and not to follow it."
Two-thirds of us these days tell pollsters we don't trust our
elected officials. Two-thirds.
It's an astonishingly sad statistic.
We criticize them for pandering, for cow-towing to special
interests, for being survey driven, and yet I stand here
before you today telling you that we are cumulatively, all
of us, responsible for this situation.
We've turned the very individuals who seek to be our
leaders into followers because history has not proven kind to
the politician who stands for principle.
They lose elections. That is entirely accurate.
They lose elections. That's what happened to Ralph
Carr. He looses one of the closest
elections in Colorado history in 1942, flip one vote in each of
the state's roughly 1,500 precincts and you have a
completely different response. Maybe I've overly romanticized
this story, but while Ralph Carr did not retain elected office in
1942, he retained something so much more basic,
so much more fundamental. Ralph Carr retained his
conscience. And that's really what makes
this story bigger than politics and elections.
Ralph Carr's story is a life lesson for all of us because
we have all had situations in our lives where we did not stand
up for what we believed in. Maybe we didn't protect a kid on
the playground. Maybe we didn't defend a
colleague at work. Maybe we just didn't stand up
for our own values, whatever the case may be.
If we're being honest with ourselves we can think of many
instances. That guilt that we live with
today for not standing up, when everybody else was sitting down.
There is a poem that's on display at the holocaust
museum in Washington D.C. and it was written by a German
pastor, the Reverend Martin Neimoller, who spent the last
couple years of World War II himself imprisoned in
a German concentration camp. Reverend Neimoller's poem goes
as follows: First, they came for the
socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a
socialist. Then, they came for the trade
unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade
unionst. Then, they came for the Jews and
I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then, they came for me and there was no one left to speak for me.
Ralph Carr did not wait to speak out.
This story is really a call to action to all of us.
If we get another chance to be courageous, to take it,
to get past that feeling that we all have of simply not wanting
to cause waves. Coincidentally, when I stumbled
this story, I was re-reading former President John F.
Kennedy's "Profiles in Courage," for the first time since high
school. The stories that he shares of
Stalwarts in the United States senate who sacrificed to do
the right thing, that has been taught in civics classes
nationwide for decades now. President Kennedy wrote that in
a democracy, every one of us is in a position of responsibility
and in the final analysis, the kind of government we get
depends on how we fulfill our responsibilities.
I guess the modern day cliches are will we walk the walk,
will we practice what we preach.
Because as the former president concludes, we the people are
the boss and the kind of political leadership we're going
to get, be it good or bad, is up to us.
That's what we need to demand and deserve.
In 1942, the political leadership in Colorado sincerely
believed in standing up for the Bill of Rights, for what he felt
defined America. And unlike so many of our
elected officials today, when confronted with criticism,
and Governor Carr faced death threats, threats of impeachment,
and yet he still refused to back down and became even more
resolute. He said if you try to do
Japanese Americans harm, "you must first harm me."
For he said, he had been raised with the shame and dishonor of
race hatred and he challenged crowds by saying that it
threatened the happiness of all of us.
Ralph Carr had faith in Coloradans.
All he had to do was to get out there and explain his position.
He showed them a faith that they didn't necessarily show him at
the next election. Yet this point is so critical.
He was willing to walk away to accept his fate.
Walk away to do the right thing. There's a famous quote from the
former US senator Henry Clay who once said, "It is better to be
right than to be president." And interestingly enough,
Henry Clay was never elected president.
If you had any doubt about Ralph Carr's integrity on this issue
and how sincerely he believed in these principles, I want to
share with you two anecdotes. The first deals with a woman
named Mitchie Terasaki. She was a Coloradan who had
passed the civil service exam before the war and couldn't
get a job. She had Japanese grandparents
but she didn't speak any Japanese, she spoke only
English, having been born and raised in Denver.
She approaches Governor Carr after a speech that he gave and
shared with him her story. He takes her name and her
number and then he calls her the next week.
Her phone rings and he says, "Mrs. Terasaki, this is Governor
Ralph Carr. You're to report to the
Department of Health and Human Services at 9 AM on Tuesday.
Don't be late." He was a stickler for
punctuality. He hated when people were late.
The only other time Mrs. Terasaki spoke with
Governor Carr was a few days after Pearl Harbor when her
phone rings at home again. "Mrs. Terasaki, this is Governor
Ralph Carr. If you're scared to come in to
work today, I'll send my car and my driver for you."
The other story deals with a woman by the name of
Wakako Domoto, who was interned at Camp Amache which was one of
the internment camps in Colorado.
Despite Ralph Carr's protestation he could
not stop the inevitable internment of Japanese Americans
and non-citizens alike. Ralph Carr brings her to Denver
just days before leaving office. Days before he leaves a position
that he believed he lost because of this stand.
She lives at his house, he pays for her college education
and he hires her as a nanny for his first grandchild.
All the while, his neighbors across the fences are saying
aren't you worried when you wake up that the baby will be dead?
"We get the kind of political leadership," President Kennedy
wrote, "be it good or bad,that we demand and deserve."
We the people are the boss. When Ralph Carr died in the fall
of 1950, the gates at the internment camps had been
open for five years. The people who had been inside
them were given a modest amount of money and a bus ticket,
and told to recapture their lives and they were in the
process of once again assimilating into the society.
And Ralph Carr was once again running for governor.
One of his campaign planks was that he had always stood up for
the rights of American citizens. What caused his defeat a mere
eight years earlier, he was counting on Colorado voters to
see the wisdom in that stand and bring him back to the governor's
mansion. Ralph Carr dies after the
primary. Complications related to
diabetes. All indications were that he
would have been successful that fall.
He was memorialized throughout the state.
Tributes flowed in from every corner.
Maybe the most poignant came a political columnists of the
day, who wrote in the newspaper, "Ralph Carr was a friend
to man." What more needs to be said.
I'll leave the answer to that question in your able hands.
Thank you so much for having me here tonight and letting me
share this story with you.