<Begin Segment 12>

MA: Where do you think your... you mentioned before, when your parents were going through the eminent domain issue with the State, and you said you weren't as conscious as you are now, how did that transition happen for you?

IK: Probably when I started to teach. Because now things were facing me, like the Pearl Harbor announcement, and that teacher said Japanese were cannibals. But also a big factor was my husband. He was a history major. In fact, he was a Japanese history minor in his day. I didn't even know that they even had such a thing as even a minor in that program. He grew up, he went to camp from the time he was ten. His father had to go back to Japan because the oldest son that my husband never met, there was like twenty years' difference between the oldest brother and my husband. So he never saw him, 'cause he died before the war ended, I think. And so his father had to go back to Japan, so he took his family to Tule Lake. And so my husband was very bilingual, both his parents spoke no English. Loved everything Japanese in terms of the songs and everything. And so going through college, too, his interest was in Japanese history and language and everything. So he got his teaching credential two years after I did. And almost immediately, within a few years... in fact, we met when he, I took a one-year leave from my assignment and went to live in Japan for a year. And so he became my sub to teach the language. And then when he returned to his other assignment, within a couple of years or so he was sent downtown. And not just for Japanese, it was, he started the, what they called (America's) Intercultural Minorities. And I don't even know if anybody in the school district ever remembers him now. Even though he hasn't been gone that long, I don't know that people realize that he developed the entire program. And it was at Hamilton High, he brought in resources from the Jewish community, the Chinese, everything. In fact, he got to be such an expert that both communities started asking him to speak to their groups.

And about that same time, when he was developing those programs, a big part of that was what they called the Asian American Studies Kit. It started off at elementary, and then expanded into the high school, so it was K-12. The Asian American Studies Kit was basically a film strip with teacher's guides. And it was Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Filipino, Pacific Islander, I guess. But there were five groups. And so part of that program, that's about the time when, from the State, they mandated, it was called 3.3 something, it was... so teachers had to take it for a salary point. They had no choice.

MA: They had to take a multicultural education training?

IK: Right, and it was under this 3.3.

MA: Do you know what year this was?

IK: It would have been in the '70s.

MA: '70s, okay.

IK: And so that's when he trained a lot of teachers and administrators. Administrators also had to take it. It was required, mandated that all teachers go through it. And somewhere along the line, I don't know if it's still around, frankly. With Open Court and all these other things that have come in to take up all the time, there's no time for anything else. I don't know if that's what happened. But anyway, so it was about that time when he was working on all these guides and lessons that he and his friend, who was helping him with the trainings, talked about forming the Japanese American Historical Society. And it was formed by teachers. And the whole idea was to educate the general public. And we got married in '69, so it was during that time that, because of what he was doing, I became involved as well. And that's where I think most of my education... (...) through him and everything, and that's where I got a lot of the background and more awareness of it, and you start meeting people who really have this huge encyclopedic mind about things like Aiko Herzig. And you sit there and listen and you learn from them. There were so many people who knew so much, and I think that's the difference. And, of course, with time changing, you start having people who are now in positions to effect change from the government side. And I think that's really, really important. Unfortunately, our young people don't really seem to understand that because we don't have really young ones running for office.

<End Segment 12> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.