#018 Chet Campanella Interview

Welcome to the podcast Change Law. This is John Thibault, the founder and CEO of iLobby and the author of the number one international bestseller, how to Change Law, where we discuss politics, policy, and, well, political persuasion, because we want to empower voters to start thinking about changing laws. So join us.

Hi, this is John Tebow. I'm the founder of iLobby, and we have on the phone with us today Chet Campagnola. Chet was born in San Jose and spent most of his life there. He attended the University of Utah School of Pharmacy and received his degree in pharmacy, practiced here in the San Jose area for probably about 35 years and been married for 58 years. We're glad to have Chet on with us today, and we want to talk about some issues in BUILD that are important to him. So before I dive into that, there's two bills that I think are particularly interesting, and they're in Congress right now. They were sponsored by Congresswoman Zoe Lofgren in the San Jose area, and one is HR 1706, and the other is HR 1707. So, Chet, let me ask you.

Tell.

Us a little bit about the background of these bills or what the problem is that you are trying to solve.

Okay. Actually, right at the start of World War II, actually, on December 7, 1941, actually, the mistreatment of the Italians during that time, during the war was simply horrible. Now, what this involved was the mistreatment of 600,000 Italian immigrants to the United States from Italy who had not yet become American natural life citizens and were classified as Italian enemy aliens and were forced to endure many injustices and mistreatments here in the United States during World War II. The reason for that was that our United States government thought that these 600,000 Italian enemy aliens were going to possibly show sympathy towards Italy because Italy at that time was our enemy. Now, that was so far from the truth, because these immigrants, including my mom and dad, came to the United States for, you know, a better life, loved America, and would actually do nothing to harm their new country. Okay. So what they were made to do was to endure many, many mistreatments. And as a child, I was 12 years old at the time. I remember them well, lived through them, and they've stayed with me for the rest of my life now very much.

Let me just interrupt for a second. It's very much like what happened with the Japanese in.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

I think what you're touching on is an area that most people are not even aware of.

See, I find that less than No, I find that in. I've given many talks on it, in fact, to the Senate Rules Committee and congressmen. People like that, different. Like San Jose High school student body, Willow Glen High School student body, the friends and family of the Japanese Nisei Group. And of all the people I've ever spoken to, I find that less than 3% of the people actually have any knowledge whatsoever of the mistreatments or that it ever happened. And this I found to be unacceptable. Okay.

Yeah. Let me ask you something. Why is this coming up now? In other words, have you been working on this for a while?

I've been working on it for 18 years now. The reason why is that. Well, let's go into this. The reason why we don't know about it is there are two factors there. First of all, the Italians that were made to endure these mistreatments were so ashamed of the way that they had been treated for the four years during the war, while at the same time having 700,000 of our Italian boys fighting and dying here in the United States for our cause that they didn't want to talk about it. Secondly, our United States government made all of these mistreatments classified information, top secret, believe this or not, for 65 years. So we could not talk about it. I mean, we couldn't discuss. Was never printed in any of our newspapers, magazines, it was never taught in our schools. Even till today, it has not been allowed to be discussed even in the history classes of our schools. Okay. So I started about 18 years ago and been fighting with Congress ever since. And I am still fighting with them, you know, but I was. I'll interject one thing. I did give a testimony, 35 minute testimony to the Senate Rules Committee in Sacramento. And at the end of my testimony, actually pro Tim, who's, you know, like president or in charge of the Senate Rules Committee, gerald Steinberg said, Mr. Campanella, would you please take a few minute rest? I've got to talk to the senators. And I said, fine. He came back to me and guess what he said. Mr. Campanulla, I'm sorry to say this, he says, but until you gave us that testimony, there's not one senator, including myself, that knew anything about these happenings. Can you imagine that?

Yeah. No, I think, you know, the kind of quality of thinking that you have from your experience is something that, you know is really important. I mean, I can see that when you mentioned 65 years, this wouldn't come out of a classified situation until around 2010, 2012, roughly.

That's right. And it was actually there were three congressmen from New York who actually came up with a bill after a lot of pressure on them, including myself. And that was Rick Lazio, Alphonse d', Amato, and let's see, the third was Eliot Engel. They came up with a bill to declassify it, and Congress went along with it and enacted the bill. And so now we can talk about it.

Right, right. And it looks like, aside from Representative Zoe Lofgren, there's two co sponsors on this bill, HR 1706 and HR 1707. And it's Michael Capilano from.

There you go. There you go.

Pascrel, who's a Democrat from New Jersey.

Nine. Right. I actually wrote letters to them. In fact, I wrote 150 letters to different Congress people throughout the United States asking them to sponsor the bills or at least bring them to the House floor and vote on them. And actually, of the 150, I received one response so far.

Interesting. Let me ask you, how did you know to do that? In other words, you seem to be pretty persistent. You understood that you needed to have a sponsored bill to move this forward, and you've done it in a really intelligent way in terms of at least a lot of people. I mean, we see today people demonstrating in the streets, smashing police cars, burning.

Yeah. Not right way.

But you did it the right way.

Right.

Let me ask you, if you were going to share that idea with people, what caused you to say, you know what? This is how you have to approach the government?

Right. Okay. What I did, I don't condone any of that violence because of the fact that the violence that I see that happens is that they do it in their own neighborhood. And actually what they're doing is destroying property, for instance, you know, but it's their neighbors that they're harming. And this is wrong, wrong, wrong. You know, you can't solve anything with violence. I think you just have to, you know, just talk it out.

Right. Yeah.

And so what I did on this is that I spoke with the Congresswoman Solofran, and I'll be up front and truthful with you, and she'll tell you the same. I told her that there are two things that I wanted from the United States government. First of all was I wanted a grant from the Secretary of Education so that we could go ahead and use that grant money to educate the American population. As to the mistreatments, that was number one. Number two, I said, hey, you know, for all of these mistreatments and Such I think that we, millions of survivors here in the United States, deserve a formal public apology, which I did get from the state of California on my own. Okay, I got that. Actually, it was August 20, 2010. They did give me a formal public apology, believe it or not, on behalf of the state of California, and I want the same from the United States government. So what happened there is that Congresswoman Zol Loughran said, chet, you go ahead and write up the bills, and after you write them, you deliver them to my office and hand deliver them, and I will go ahead and put them in congressional language, or law language, whatever it is. And she did that. So this year, on actually the date was March 23, 2017, she did submit both bills to Congress. She introduced them, and they're both in committee, but that's not good enough. I want them brought to the House floor so at least they could be examined, discussed, and voted on to become law.

Right, right. You want to get a full hearing on this thing, I understand.

That's correct.

Yeah. And then it looks like the grant amount. Did you decide on the. The number of $50,000 or was that incorrect?

I'm asking. No, not 50,000. I'm asking for $3 million.

Oh, are you?

But. Oh, yeah. $3 million to be used, you know, throughout the year. And actually, the highest number or money amount on each grant that he, you know, authorizes would be $50,000.

Oh, I see.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah. I was just looking at the original text of the bill. Right, right.

And Then so that's HR 1706 has to do with the grant for education, and 1707 has to do with asking for a formal public apology on behalf of the United States through Congress.

Right. Now, has the congresswoman given you any indication of the likelihood of this moving forward in committee?

Thanks for asking that one. She doesn't have to. I already know with a Republican Congress majority, and being that she is a Democrat and I'm the middle of the road, I already know that my chances of having these two bills passed is exactly 1%.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Who in your mind would support you or who would be opposed to this, or is it just part of the system that it's not going to move forward because of the party politics?

It's the party politics. Now, what I have done in my 150 letters, I told them that this is not a party situation. This is strictly a human rights and civil rights situation issue. Okay. And this is the way I would want them to proceed on it. Now, here's another one that I've done, but it seems that I'm. I'm doing most of it all my own for some reason. Anyway, I got a hold of a Speaker of the House, Paul Ryan. Okay. And I told him that I was going to email him and every day asking him to support and have Congress support these two bills. And I would not give up until the two bills are passed. So as of this morning, there have been 17 days in a row that I have emailed them, and I will continue to do it if it takes me the rest of the year.

Yeah. Well, it sounds like you're pretty determined about moving.

I am, yeah.

If they. Well, ask you two questions. If they don't pass in this session of Congress, is your plan to reintroduce them or what would you do?

Oh, yeah, yeah. I'm going to do it year after year. I'm not giving up. I'm only 86 years of age and I've got 14 more ahead of me. Yeah.

Yeah. Good for you. And then let's say that by some fluke, enough people support you and believe in what you're doing. You know, like the Italian American community says, you know what? I'm glad you brought this up. We idea and more people come to your aid and help you out, and then you get this passed eventually. Because it doesn't look like there's any major cost involved here. There's not something that should be. It feels like the right, dignified thing to do.

Right.

If the bill passed, what would that mean to you and your community?

Actually, it would be closure, I think. You know, I think it's something that is well deserved and long overdue. Now, let me go back just a second. I said something that was not entirely, 100% true. I'm not doing it on my own. I do have organizations. In fact, my biggest supporter is the National Italian American Foundation, Washington, D.C. and can I name one lady that's helping me? Sure.

Absolutely.

Okay. Lisa Femia, F E M I A. One of the greatest, most beautiful women in the world. Okay. She actually took an article of mine and wrote it up, and it was called Fighting to Right a Wrong. And she actually entered it into their quarterly magazine and distributed it to 150,000 members. So figuring husband and wife in a household, actually, I probably had 300,000 people reading it and possibly backing me up. Right. But has it passed yet? Nope. You know.

Interesting.

But I do have. I do also have Japanese organizations backing me up, and I do have a few Italian organizations backing me up. I've got the Lodge, the largest lodge in the state of Florida, backing me up. And I do have some backers, but when I ask them to, for instance, contact their congressman or get on email or letter, they just don't do it. They don't take the time to do it.

Yeah. I mean, you've taken a lot of action and initiative to move this forward. And I think for many people, for many Americans, you're right, it's hard. You know, we know how many people vote and the percentages are relatively. They remain low, but then to take action and to say, okay, I'm going to call my congressman, I'm going to write a letter, I'm going to get on talk radio.

Right.

Write an editorial. All of those take a fair amount of dedication and effort and work. And so you're right, people tend not to do it. But I think one of the things that we're trying to do here, or I am anyway, as well, is to encourage people that civic engagement is really critical to helping this country. Right.

May I interject something? I can really make it fast, but can I maybe just say a few words on the different types of mistreatments that we went through or. Yeah, absolutely, absolutely. Okay, let's see. You don't want to go in detail on this, do you?

No, no. We'll probably have a few more minutes. And again, I'm going to ask you because.

Yeah. In order for me to go ahead and give it to you in detail, God, It'd take about 25, 30 minutes. So I don't want to do that. Actually, to start off with, we were made to endure curfews, and the curfews each day and night would last between 8 o' clock at night and 6 in the morning. And that meant that if any Italian enemy alien that included my mom and dad were found to be out of their homes, they would be apprehended, arrested and put in jail. Okay. Secondly, we were made to endure travel restrictions where we could not travel more than five miles from our home for any reason. Then we go on. And they were forced, including my mom and dad, were forced to go to their local post office and with the help of an interpreter, made to fill out forms, after which they were fingerprinted and photographed. And then they were given Italian enemy alien booklets that they had to carry on their person at all times for identification. Okay. Then our homes were searched by the FBI for signaling devices. And when they searched our homes, they did so, of course, without a warrant and without any prior notice. Right. Then we Go on to tell about the many, many Italian enemy aliens, fishermen who had their boats confiscated by the Navy. And they were confiscated without any payment whatsoever. And when they were returned, they were in such bad shape that the majority of them all had to be destroyed. Okay, then we go on to tell about the 10,000 Italian enemy aliens live in coastal communities where President Theodore Roosevelt went ahead and came out with a executive order stating that these places where they were living were strategic areas not to be inhabited by any enemy aliens. So these people, 10,000 of them, were forced to board up their homes and to move, and they were evacuated without any compensation from our government whatsoever. The same with about 2,000 up in Pittsburgh, California. Then we go on, and nobody knows about this, but there were hundreds to thousands of Italian enemy aliens, including my uncle, who were arrested by the FBI and interned in internment camps. Okay? And we had internment camps all throughout the United States, the largest being at Fort Missoula, Montana. And there was where the Japanese were interned. And next to the Japanese, the Italians, and next to them the Germans, German citizens. And next to them Latin American Jews and Latin American Japanese from Peru. But nobody knows about that. And the sad thing about it is that with all of these mistreatments, and I was like 12 years old, and I remember there was not one instance during the entire war, a four year period where they were really mistreated, that there was any indication whatsoever, any proof that they ever did any sabotage for the enemy, spying for the enemy, or did anything to hinder the American war effort. And this was not right.

Okay, now were they citizens or were they legal residents of that.

Okay, now what they were the reason why they were actually classified as Italian enemy aliens. Were the people that had not yet become American naturalized citizens.

Okay, so they were in the process.

Yeah, they were in the process, but had not yet become naturalized citizens. See, now the difference there is that the Japanese actually, when they were interned, 65% of them, and some of them were my friends, were actually naturalized American citizens. 65% of them were citizens of the United States. They should have never been interned.

And where did you grow up? Was this in San Jose?

I grew up in San Jose, went to grammar school here and junior high school and high school and then, like you said, went to the University of Utah College of Pharmacy, where I got my degree.

Yeah, no, I think the story you're telling is fascinating and more people need to hear about it. More need. More people need to support your bill.

Right.

Something that we can do to move this along. We would be Happy to do it.

Oh, I love that. I'd love that.

One final question then.

Sure.

If people who hear this podcast, you know, hear it, what would you like listeners to do in your mind?

What I would like for them to do is. Okay, what they can do is they can phone me and say, chet, we'd like, we've got 150 people out here and we would like to have you come and give them a 35 minute testimony on the mistreatment of the Italians during World War II. Number one. Number two, I would like for them to get a hold of their congressman. Okay, Congressman. And to mention to them, Bill 1706, 1707. And they would encourage their congressmen to go ahead and bring it to the House floor, discuss it, examine it and support it and vote in favor.

Perfect. So we really appreciate you coming on today and sharing that story with us. You know, if we have follow up questions, Phil, we'll get back to you on this.

Sure.

I really thank you for coming on today.

Oh, it's my pleasure, Bill, that you're.

Trying to move forward.

My pleasure is out there.

Who can help move this forward. How would you like them to contact you? You mentioned your phone, but I don't know if you really want to put your phone number up. Sure. Otherwise, just contact us through Ilobby and that would be fine, too.

No, they can, they can call me direct or email me. You've got my email. I do not.

If you want to give it out, that would be fine.

CLC21BCGlobal.net and the phone number 408-266-7825.

Perfect. Thank you so much.

Sure.

And John Chiba would Chet capanella talking about HR 1706. 1707, bringing a critical issue to the Americans today about understanding some of the changes that we would like to see happen.

This has been the podcast Change of Law by John Thibault. To learn more, just visit ilobby Co or you can also visit our blog@rightoflaw.com thanks for listening.