Densho Digital Archive - Frank Miyamoto Interview IV (denshovh-mfrank-04-0025)

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FM: When the unionization issue came up in the cannery worker system, I believe what happened, as far as I know -- and I have no clear personal knowledge of these matters so I can only talk about what appeared to me to be the case -- was that the contractors, Japanese contractors, in the 1930s saw that their position was slipping away from them and therefore that they, and that the, as the unions made increasing demands on them, that they would have to yield to, they would have to defend themselves against the pressure of the union. They turned, then, it seems to me, to Clarence Arai to try to stem this tide and I suspect Arai tried to organize then a, an AF of L or relatively conservative union, union, in contrast to the more radical kind of unionization that the Filipinos were pressing for at that time. And I had forgotten totally about this, but your mention of the fact that this kind of unionization occurred, does recall to mind that at some point, or at some stage of the cannery unionization process, that there was, in the picture, the possibility, or there was discussion of the possibility that this kind of union headed up by Clarence Arai might be established.

I think changes of this kind, however, necessarily reflect the events of the largest society at all times. And in the larger society, as you know, the, what was happening was that the AF of L, the American Federation of Labor, the trade union was under the gun in 1930 because of its conservatism and with the increasing, rapidly increasing protest of the laboring population in the United States, for democratization of union activities, the trade union was, was less and less successful in maintaining its position and there, very soon, came into the picture the Congress of Industrial Organization, CIO, which dominated American labor scene for at least a few decades. And the Filipino organization, I think, was ultimately, certainly it became a CIA -- CIO type of union. In any event, was organizing in a different fashion than the AF of L type of organization that Clarence Arai represented.

In the larger scene, then, the CIO were moving ahead in a fashion that the AF of L simply could not defend itself against. And the same thing, so to speak, happened in the cannery workers system as well. I sensed from very early on that the AF of L's union was not going to succeed and I saw it as an effort of the contractors to stem the tide of something that they wanted to prevent. But I did not, as I recall, feel that there was any chance of success of Clarence Arai's union. That's about the extent of my knowledge of Clarence Arai and his involvement in the cannery union activities.

In contrast, at the Waterfall cannery, as I said earlier, there were a couple of people who represented the CIO union, who were an increasingly noticeable presence there. George Taki on the one hand, Takizawa, and Dyke Miyagawa, and in a sense they suddenly appeared on the scene, and very shortly, the offices at the bunk-, the Japanese offices that were part of the bunkhouse set-up, which Nagamatsu, the contractor and his foreman, Jack, occupied, suddenly were taken over by Taki and Miyagawa and these former heads of the Japanese, I mean, the Asian crew no longer were there. And I have no clear recollection of how that kind of transformation occurred, transition occurred, but it, nevertheless, clearly happened in a fairly rapid succession.