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TI: Something else that happened about this time, or maybe a little bit later, was there were quite a few Niseis in Tokyo, many of them actually soldiers with the MIS and the occupation forces. And you did something interesting. You became a Jodo Shinshu minister, Buddhist minister during this time. Can you tell me about that, how that came about?

KY: Yes. It's kind of a long story, but this group was called International Buddhists Association, IBA, and it was formed primarily because, among the occupation forces, there were quite a number of Nikkei people, Niseis, at the time, mostly, and some other Japanese-speaking friendly to Japan type people that were interested in Buddhism. Mainly because in Japan up to that particular time period, there's no such thing as Sunday services. Every Sunday, people say, "Okay, better go to church." Nothing like that. Whereas in the U.S., as you know, every Sunday, we go to church. Sunday, church, Sunday, church. But in Japan there was no such, shall we say, habit, custom to do so. All we said was, here's a huge, well, in our sense, a huge number of Nikkei or Buddhism oriented types in the U.S. forces, occupation forces, that don't have a place to go or to observe their religious services. So we said, "Hey, we ought to form a group of Sunday-going religious groups could have services." It so happened that in 1949-'50, there was a ex-BCA minister that was rinban at the Tokyo Tsukiji Hongwanji.

TI: So I should mention, when you say "ex-BCA," ex-Buddhist Church of America.

KY: America.

TI: So he had served time...

KY: He had served a couple of years in California down south. But anyway, his name was Nakagami, Nakagami, Bunyu, I think his first name was, Bunyu Nakagami. Someplace down south in California couple of years. So he knew the custom and what the Nisei type people wanted, Sunday services, Sunday school. Anyway, Sunday services. So I'll give him a chance to have this kind of a place, so here's Tsukiji Hongwanji. It's a big, if you've been there, you know how big it is, but if you don't, well, it's a huge Indian architecture type building.

TI: And this is the one right by the large fish market.

KY: That's right, the world's largest Tsukiji fish market within a block, half a block.

TI: And I walked by it.

KY: And it's close by, and good-sized parking lot for cars and so on. Anyway, they have a huge, main worship hall, and they can put a thousand people in there. I don't know if a thousand means sitting on the floor or chairs, but they seat a thousand people. So it's huge. Anyway, this Rinban Nakagami says, "You can have your services here. Main worship hall." Imagine, that huge place, and here we are, a small group of around fifty, usually, fifty to a hundred using this place, getting a chance to use that place. Plus, (Rev.) Nakagami says, "I'll give you office space," he set up an office for us. And about that time, Reverend Seki, Hozen Seki from New York Buddhist Church, he also came by and he reinforced our desire, 'cause he was in New York, he knew what our needs were, he spoke to Rinban Nakagami. He agreed, "What you're doing is fine." But Reverend Seki wanted us to form a branch of the New York Buddhist... what did they call it? American Buddhist Academy, he's got an organization group in New York. He had that started, so he said, "Say, how about a branch? (Please) form a Tokyo branch of this American Buddhist Academy." But the leaders of our... too closely, I don't remember all of the negative type things that they kind of pointed out, but they said, "No, that's (not) independence, and we'll call it the International Buddhist Association, IBA." So this was an all-volunteer group, and Reverend Seki was one of the helpers in organizing, and we had Reverend... it'll come to me, but a couple of Nisei reverends that were already reverends, and they became the leaders of this group in 1950. And they came back to... oh, yeah, the two Nisei were Reverend Fujimoto, Hogen Fujimoto, BCA, he passed away. He worked with headquarters for a while, but I forget just exactly where. But he and Reverend Takemoto, they were the two that were ministers when we formed this organization, and they were our leaders at the time. And then subsequently, I went to the Tokyo Buddhist Seminary to become ordained. So I and David Iwamoto were both ordained at the same time, and we became the leaders of this group. And later on, there were others that joined the group and then came to the U.S., they were students at Tokyo University or ex-students at Ryukoku University. And there were people like Tai Unno, Tetsu Unno.

<End Segment 24> - Copyright (c) 2009 Densho. All Rights Reserved.