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MA: Can you talk more about the historical society, its mission and how, I guess, it changed over the years as awareness, maybe, of the internment and of Japanese American history sort of proliferated, I guess, more on a societal level.

IK: Well, the whole idea, the whole intent of the historical society, part of the mission statement says to promote, preserve and perpetuate the Japanese American heritage. And as I said initially, it was because they were all teachers, it's what they knew best. And so it was through the avenue of in-services, lectures, and different things of that nature that would... so the first event we had was in Little Tokyo and it was on Nisei Week. And so he got what we call the pioneers, they're all gone now. Sam Minami, who was real important in the Gardena area with FOR, the basketball program, Friends of Richard. And very active with Nisei Week and all that. So Sam was on that, Shimizu Mitsuhiko, I think, Asahi Shoe Store downtown. And there was one other person, I don't remember now. So what we would do is get people who were kind of like a reservoir of knowledge, I guess. Experience, and that's how they had their knowledge. And we would have panels, lectures. But the big thing was putting on teacher in-services. And it wasn't just for L.A. Unified, because people could come from other school districts. And it was for a salary point, which is really the only way you're going to get a large number of teachers, because they can get salary points. And it was always called the Asian American Experience, and so it wasn't just the Japanese American experience. And so my husband would get people coming in from the college community who were experts in their fields. And they had the arts and crafts and that kind of stuff. And so we did that for about nine years. And then about that time, the attendance just dropped for two things. I think a lot of the teachers who had already satisfied the requirement weren't taking the classes anymore. 'Cause my husband would just change the number, and so they could come and take the class a number of times. And it wouldn't be exactly the same, 'cause speakers are different. And so there are people who got their 3.3 credit by taking our in-service over and over and over. But there were others, right, the Mexican American and the Native American. So there were other avenues for their 3.3 credit. So that was part of the reason that the attendance started to drop. And so I think -- and at about the ninth year, we quit doing it. It was just not enough bang for the buck, in other words, the response wasn't there.

MA: And you began publications, right?

IK: Right. So in '98, the first one we did was on the resettlement years. And then in 2002, it was "Turning Points," which had to do with being JA. That the assumption was that your turning point probably wouldn't have happened if you were anything other than JA. And then in 2004 it was Little Tokyo. I really didn't want to do that one because it was so concentrated. And I thought, "I'm going to have a heck of a time getting people to write," 'cause it's so hard to have people write. So I really wanted to do something along this Japanese American family line, something broader. But anyway, I got outvoted and so we did Little Tokyo. And it turned out to be actually a good move. With all the changes that have just, all of a sudden just, bam, happened just since 2004, just in the last couple of years with Little Tokyo. So I thought, hey, so when I was selling off the last of the books I kept telling, "This is going to be a collector's item because so many things have already changed." [Laughs] And so that, so it was a good move to do that. And I think that this one will probably be my last. I don't have any other themes that I'm thinking of doing.

MA: And this one you're working on now is about family?

IK: Right, the Japanese American family. I did five focus groups at my home. They were just day-long, from the morning to late afternoon, and I had groups of ten Nisei come for the sole purpose of just talking. Because I knew they would not all write anything. And so I thought at least maybe what I can do is get five, so that's fifty people, get their comments on tape, and then put that into the book as the results of these fifty people. And so, like a poll, represents a larger number. And I was surprised, actually. I went into these focus groups almost with, I guess, stereotype assumptions. I assumed that everybody that was coming there, or the majority, would say that their parents went to Hawaii first, worked on the plantation, and then came over here, whatever. Turned out to be opposite. The majority of people -- and a lot of them were from Hawaii, too, of course, their parents did go to Hawaii first. But the vast majority did not stop in Hawaii, they came straight here. And also I had the assumption that the majority... almost, it was at least half anyway. In fact, I was thinking that all of them, actually, I was thinking "all," and there never is an "all," right? But I thought all of them came with not higher than what is called high school -- it's not the same high school, when we say high school in Japan, it's really not high school here. I mean, it translates to high school. But anyway, because a lot of the parents had been born in the 1800s or turn of the century, 1900 to 1904, I just assumed that they would all come with not higher than high school. And one group came, and there were, I think, three or four college-educated. Not just Japan, but here. There was a father that had gone to Berkeley, another one went to Columbia, I said, "Oh, my god." [Laughs] And then the point of those focus groups also was to share their memories of how their parents parented them. And as Nisei parents, how was it with their kids? Kind of this comparison.

MA: That's interesting. What are some conclusions that you made or some things that people talked about?

IK: Well, this part ended up being the same, which, this was an assumption that was true. That the common, the commonality of all the groups when they talked about their parents, all the same. Work ethic was really strong. Worked hard, persevered, gave up a lot of things for the good of the children. All those values. And that's what I think I've said in the opening of one of my pieces is that you could get a room full of Nisei who don't know each other. When they start talking about how it was when they were kids, all of a sudden, "Yeah, my father did that, too." You know, it'll be very same. So the external things were all over the place. The education, the places they lived, even the jobs, those were pretty much a variety. But the way they lived, that was all the same.

MA: And what did they say, the Niseis, about their parenting style for the Sanseis? That's interesting to me as well.

IK: Not as strict as their parents. They... well, again, it depends on their ages. You get your older and younger. But you could say that more Nisei parents, in contrast to the Issei parents, did communicate with their kids, because they had English in common. Not as Dr. Spockish as maybe the Sansei parents.

<End Segment 13> - Copyright © 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.