<Begin Segment 52>

ET: There's a big -- the Japanese language was principally spoken because the Isseis were running the show.

DG: Before the war.

ET: When they started to die off or turn over to the Niseis, then it started to change.

DG: And you say that just in the last president or two, you had bilingual.

ET: About 1970, huh.

TH: That's right.

ET: That's when we almost took over.

DG: When you were president, Elmer, you did the meetings in Japanese?

ET: Both English and Japanese. Best we could, I mean. And I have to be dragged in too. Nobody wanted to take the president's chair.

YM: Well, we got a president later, but you were doing all the work, I remember.

ET: I just happened to fall in that period when there was a lot of negotiation that had to be done.

<End Segment 52> - Copyright © 1998 Densho. All Rights Reserved.