<Begin Segment 16>

AI: When you first joined the state legislature, did you detect any negativity towards you because of your ethnic background? You, as you say, you were the only Japanese American, and there was only one other Asian American and he was in the state senate at that time.

PB: Right.

AI: Did you maybe face, maybe not outright discrimination there but maybe some skepticism about whether you could indeed do a good job as a legislator?

PB: No, I don't recall or know of any instance and when there was any kind of feeling in that way. I do remember one thing, though. I carried a bill in order to legalize acupuncture. And people thought that acupuncture is a Chinese, or -- [laughs] -- you might say, a Asian thing. And so when I brought the bill in -- and I had studied it -- I got a lot of negative feeling. But the negative was not brought on by the people there, it was brought on by the medical profession, because they said they don't want acupuncturists going into their field of good medicine. But I had given it a lot of study before I put the bill in. There was one state, Nevada that had legalized it a year before. So I went and studied their bill, their reaction. And then what I did is -- I used to go to the Orient, too, quite a bit. I went over and found out what they were doing, and I found that they were using acupuncture. The dentists were using it, the doctors were using it when they operated. And so I said, "I will carry the bill." So regardless of the medical profession and the AMA's opposing it, I was able to get the bill through with an amendment to the effect that acupuncturists could operate only under a licensed medical doctor. I felt that once that went through, the acupuncturists, that since the doctor didn't know anything about it anyway, the acupuncturists would be able to work, which worked out very well. In fact, I had several MDs that eventually went to school, a school which I helped start in San Francisco for acupuncturists, and they wanted to be an acupuncturist, so went to school to learn about it. So it became something that was accepted and is now not only in Nevada and California, but many, many states throughout the union.

AI: Well, that's an interesting story, because prior to that, acupuncture was illegal everywhere except for in Nevada had, as you mentioned. And now it's quite accepted as a practice, and some insurance...

PB: Oh, yeah.

AI: ...will even cover acupuncture.

PB: Right. I don't know how it is in other states, Washington or Oregon, but in California we have the school that I told you about. That school was started by a young lady that wanted to study Japanese and was a friend of my daughter. So she went to Japan to Osaka to study Japanese. Well, she got very good in Japanese, so then she went to acupuncture school to learn about it, married one of the professors there, came back to United States, and opened the acupuncture school. Now, there are several schools now there. There's one in Los Angeles owned by a Korean family. So I know that it's now accepted and it's under way.

Subsequent to the passage of that particular law and -- I took a group of doctors to China to show them the application of acupuncture by medical doctors when they operate and dentists when they work on patients. And after they saw that, they were impressed that it could be used not only by itself as a acupuncture to maybe heal or relieve pain, but it could be used in other ways. So I think that along with this bill and many other bills that I put into the hopper and helped or voted for or was an advocate for, that it did have an effect upon the population of California and my constituency. And as I say, that was my main concern that when I was there that it would be a better place to live because of whatever law was passed.

AI: Well, now your legislative career is covered in detail in another oral history interview that was conducted and is now available at the California State Archives. So I won't ask you any detailed questions there. But just one other question about your legislative work, and that is that while you worked overall for your district and the welfare of the State of California, from time to time I understand you were approached on some issues of Japanese American interest. And one of these was, I think in your last term that, and it was a bill that called for support of the setting up of a commission to hear information about the wartime internment. And did you carry that bill in the state legislature? What, if you could tell a little bit about that and the discussion around that.

PB: No, there was, as you know at that particular time there were several bills that were being proposed in Congress relative to redress and things of this nature. And most of the opposition from the California legislators was that since this is a federal matter, that we should not get involved in, one way or the other to help the other. My feeling was that a resolution just saying that we support it, that we're not voting for one thing or another, that we support legislation of that kind would be appropriate. But as I say, since it was controversial to the extent that we were "meddling in federal bills," that it did not pass. Subsequent to my election there, Floyd Mori from up north near... north of Oakland was elected also to the California State Assembly. And many of you know that he is now the president of the Japanese American Citizens League. But when he came into office, he also contributed quite a bit to, you might say, another view of Japanese Americans and their, you may say, desires or whatever you want to say. But as I say, since our representation in each area was so small of Japanese Americans, that all the laws and the bills that we introduced were not targeted for the benefit of Japanese Americans. We just couldn't do that and never done it.

AI: Oh, you know, that recalls one last question. And I may have the information wrong about this, but was it sometime around 1975 that there was an effort to establish some, a leave provision, a war relocation leave for some Japanese Americans who had been employees of California state government? And how, what happened with that piece of legislation?

PB: That too was a, I remember vaguely that it was introduced. But as a result of the conflict with other agencies and things of this nature, it never got through. I was interested in it because when the war started my sister was working for the Los Angeles Board of Education. And she was told that "We have to let you go." Now, she went back to work because the board of education reversed that, saying, here a board of education who teaches tolerance, who teaches all these things, to let an employee of Japanese ancestry go, even though the citizens of the United States, was completely wrong. So she went back to work. But there were instances of this kind where people were not back to work and were relieved of their jobs. And so I think it was fair to consider that. But it would be very hard to prove down the line after those many years that that was a reason why they may have been let go, so -- and there was so very few. But as I say, that one never became an issue, and it was never taken up on the floor.

<End Segment 16> - Copyright © 2000 Densho. All Rights Reserved.