<Begin Segment 27>

AI: You know, I did have one other question. Going back to Dyke Miyagawa, since you had mentioned that you had known him for quite a long time --

FM: Uh-huh.

AI: -- I was... and also, that you admired his intellectual capacity, I wondered if you ever had any conversations with him or if he ever tried to persuade you in a sense, to become more active in supporting the union activities or the union point of view?

FM: No. Two things, as soon as I would finish the cannery work I would be off to my graduate work activity. And part of the last two years was spent in Chicago, so I wasn't around to see him or to be involved in anything here. And even in, during the period when I was still here, as a graduate student, again, the campus is a kind of an isolated center away from the world of, the real world. And Dyke and I never had contact or any reason to discuss the union. Therefore, I didn't see him in those periods. Regrettably, in the sense of not knowing what was going on, I didn't have conversations with him or with George Taki, Taki, as I now wish I had, so that I could tell you more about the cannery workers. What I knew was, incidentally, there were people, Filipino leaders in the unions, unionization process whom I knew from the campus. They were graduate students or had been graduate students, and, and in a sense I approved of the unions having people whom I considered to be intelligent and solid leaders. But that, again, was world a world different from the world I was involved in, namely the academic world on campus, and I didn't see those Filipino students for a long period once this unionization activity started. So, again, I felt myself remote from this union activity. It's regrettable, but that was the way it was.

AI: So, that's interesting to me that also, among the Filipino workers, that some of the active union leaders were themselves going on to higher education.

FM: Yes.

AI: Yet, at the same time, being very active in the labor movement.

FM: That is, yeah, which is, in a sense, what you might expect, that the Filipinos were, on the whole, population, certainly among themselves, they would speak Filipino. Ilocano. And on the other hand, those whom the Nisei would most readily get acquainted with and deal with were, on the whole, people who had tried at one stage or another to get some kind of American education, usually starting with some high school or whatever and then moving on to college. And, as I say, I knew two or three of 'em from the college, university campus. And they were among the people who became the leaders of the union activity. And so, in a sense, this, this is the way you would expect it to be, that the most intelligent, or the most far-, farseeing, the most foresighted, would be the people who would be out in front in this kind of activity.

<End Segment 27> - Copyright © 2003 Densho. All Rights Reserved.