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TI: So think about the community. So after 1924, no more immigration. And so a lot of the focus, or a lot of what the, how the community changed was here you, in many cases in the last ten years or so, a lot of women came to the United States, and so families started, and you started getting, I won't say a population explosion, but a lot of children were born in the '20s and early '30s.

JY: Well, 1924, just take within the ten year period that families are really growing, and so the church was really overflowing with kids. And so the neighborhood wanted the... but my father was able to explain to the neighborhood we needed better facilities for the kids to carry out the different programs. That was when these Buddhist families pledged one month's salary at the height of the depression to make a new structure in the church.

TI: So these were Buddhist families, were they Buddhist parents, but their children would be Christian, though?

JY: They would come to the church.

TI: But even though they weren't Christian, they realized that, well, they contributed a huge sum for them.

JY: Yeah, for a month's salary. That's unheard of even these days.

TI: So why do you think they did that?

JY: They really wanted... they thought my father was working for their kids. And the interesting thing was the response from the neighborhood, that a lot of Caucasians, and they had one during, when the election came up, one of the candidates pointed to this growing neighborhood church that wanted to build a new building, and they made a big campaign to defeat this new program, and they put posters on the telephone poles.

TI: To try to stop this?

JY: Yeah. And my brother and I often in the early morning hours get on our bikes and we'd take these posters down.

TI: Because your dad told you to do that?

JY: [Laughs] No, this was just on our own, I think. No, my dad never told us to do this or that.

TI: But you thought that was the right thing to do.

JY: Yeah. And one of the interesting things of that was that there were people who, friends who wanted to have the church built, Caucasian friends in the church. And they probably took to court, and the first time I understood that the court has certain powers, that there are some mechanism in society, in our society that could help us. And there was a thing called writ of mandamus where the court is able to direct a group to follow the court's order that they had no rights to prevent the building of the church, and this writ of mandamus was issued by the court. That pleased me a lot and gave me a little light that there was some mechanism that could be utilized on our behalf.

TI: That's good, and I could see your dad looking at you and saying, "See, I told you that there are some good people."

JY: [Laughs] He didn't say that to us, but I guess we knew, at least we were able to read that impact.

TI: So you were probably one of the older Niseis, and you probably saw all these younger Niseis just growing up or emerging.

JY: Oh, I guess we just felt we were part of that.

TI: That's good.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2005 Densho. All Rights Reserved.