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TI: Now, when you look at sort of the future generations, you're Nisei, second generation, when you look at the Sanseis and Yonseis, not, and not just Japanese Americans, but anyone, what, what advice do you have in terms of making these changes? Would you suggest that the way you did it is a good way, or what can we learn from Yosh Nakagawa?

YN: What you could learn is real simple. It's not a yellow and white issue, or a black and white issue. That's how I was raised. I attacked -- that's why I said they thought I didn't like whites, because they were the ones I was attacking all the time. Okay? That was my perceived frustration. And I wasn't incorrect, but today, they're not the only group, that they have done their share of understanding. Where we need to tell people like yourselves are now the community goes laterally. It's people that we also pushed out; Native Americans, Hispanics, or blacks or Jews or whatever it is, we are now a new issue. My main drive for forty-five years was penetrating Western Euro thinking; religion, education, business, hiring, whatever it was. I never attacked Japan, China, Germany. I never attacked blacks, Africa, never. But white America doesn't hold all the problem. It's not either them or us, it's all of us. So I know my time is over in that sense, but my mind is still there.

TI: Yeah, but during that time, I'm curious, taking the stance that you did, what impact did it have on the financial, the business side?

YN: Probably the greatest, because the entrepreneurship that comes out of people, they must be able to know that they can be the entrepreneur. I'm not saying the corporate head of Microsoft. I really don't know today if your friend Scott Oki, really could, wanted to be the president of Microsoft; I really don't know. I've heard stories, and, but if he did, I would say he could do a better job than, than Bill Gates, or the ones you get now, Ballmer and everybody else. No doubt in my mind he could bring something that those other people could not bring. Okay? I'll always think that way, but I would say of the other side, there would be many of the other side that says he doesn't bring anything.

TI: No, that's, that's good. The, the way you think, the stands that you took, what impact did this have on your family?

YN: Tremendous.

<End Segment 33> - Copyright © 2004 Densho. All Rights Reserved.