<Begin Segment 30>

MN: Now before we go there, though, let's... this is the 1960s we're talking about, right? You went back to school, is that correct?

JM: I was going to school concurrently with my job at night, and I received a master's in Social Sciences, I believe, '71.

MN: So you were going to school when the Civil Rights Movement was going on, the Vietnam War.

JM: Right.

MN: So how was this affecting you as a student also?

JM: Very much so, because they were challenging everybody at the time, you know. And here I was, coming out of the army, and I was gung ho, hundred percent. And I saw all these draft, people draft-dodging, and oh, I was outraged. And I would denounce them, I said, "You're nothing but a bunch of draft-dodgers. That's all you are. You're afraid to go over there and get shot. Why are you trying to bring up all these other things?" Like I say, when I was going back to the camps and that lady talking to me, we're not, I'm not stupid. [Laughs] Maybe I'm ignorant, yes, I'm ignorant of a lot of things, but I'm not stupid. Little by little I listened to all these teachings, and my first impression was to denounce them, but the more I listened to them, the more I said, "You know, a lot of that makes sense. Why are we in Asia at all?" The most cockamamie idea is of dominoes, and what are we doing pounding these poor folks. And the black people, black speakers were very effective with me, anyway. 'Cause I used to listen to the Joe Pyne program. And Joe Pyne, a regular on his program was Malcolm X. So Malcolm X was always saying, he says, "No Vietnamese ever called me a nigger," you know. "We're just gonna go against who I feel has a foot on my neck, and that happens to be you white folks." He laid it out there. I'm like, "Wow. Here these people are getting their jollies napalming these folks, taking body counts, and what did these people ever do to you?" And then they would bring up this thing, well, "What about the time you had in camp? Were they relocation camps or were they concentration camps, what were they?" I'm sort of like, oh, yeah. Well, yeah. They had us behind barbed wire, they're calling us "Japs," they took everything, they left me with fifty dollars and a bus ticket out, and fend on your own. I don't have nothing to be... that's what kind of ticks me off about a lot of JA's too, like, I mean, we got out of there within nothing except fifty lousy bucks and a bus ticket. And as far as the government was concerned, we could have, we could have starved to death. Yet on the other hand, all these JAs, somehow we all suffered and we made it. And they're all out there so grateful for everything. "Yeah, we were in the greatest country on earth." I'm like, "Yeah, well, it's a great country, but they just dumped us like garbage." And if we did anything and we got anywhere, it's because we did it. We did it the hard and dirty way through gardening, through... you know. Isn't that the American story? I guess. If crapping on you and seeing how far you can go is the "American Dream," well, that's what it is. That's why, in a way, I became very much involved with the Asian American movement, because they brought out all these truths, so to speak. And we just throw it out there and see where it lies, and maybe the society is better for it. It's about time we got away from wallowing in hypocrisy, and let's just see what the reality of the situation is and let's see how to deal with it.

MN: Well, you mentioned Malcolm X, what about Dr. Martin Luther King? What was his message, or did you relate to his message at all?

JM: I never saw him on Joe Pyne or any of those things. I guess he wasn't controversial enough, and he was a man of the cloth. Later on, of course, when I saw the totality of his life, he's a very, very courageous person. You can't help but be awed by the amount of courage that man showed. If anyone says he wasn't a courageous man, they're really mistaken. It's just that you're attracted to Malcolm X because he's out there telling it just like it is, you know. He's just like, "My enemy isn't in Vietnam, it's right down there in the South. It's among those crackers that are beating my people." I thought, "Man, this guy makes sense." Joe Pyne, by the way, had every strange person on. He had another guy on there that... and he used to come on campus, too, at Cal State L.A., and the guy had a pistol with him all the time. He was a black activist. So I remember that one program, Joe Pyne brought out his pistol, and they were both kind of staring at each other, and this is live TV, anyway, both of them armed to the teeth. Great program. They don't have that... geez. I learned a lot from that. How else would I be exposed to people like Malcolm X? Said, "Man, that Malcolm X really tells it like it is." And even some of the black Muslim folks, I mean, I don't agree with all their religious things, but you know, their analysis on how they got treated was pretty, pretty on the target. And I really kind of liked the fact that they said their salvation was not (to be) from the white man but from themselves, and that's pretty much true, you know. 'Cause the guy says, "Yeah, that's what's wrong with," I guess that's the criticism of Martin Luther King. And at that time was, yeah, he's still depending on the white man for his salvation, for his civil rights and all that, whereas the black Muslims said, "No, no, we don't even want it. We don't even want it. You keep whatever you want, we stay away from you. 'Cause you are seeds of the devil," and what have you. [Laughs] They had their own thing. But, salvation will come from ourselves. And I said, "You know, I kind of like that part. I don't know about the rest of it, and I don't know if want to characterize white folks as "white devils," but I do know that I feel that we need to, we need to derive our own things and do our own thing, have our own movement and seek our own place in the society. That's where you get things like "cincip," you know. "Oh, yeah, yeah, we want a picnic, but we're not going to call it "picnic." We're gonna call it "cincip." We're gonna do our own things. And the Pioneer Center? We never had a thought about any public funding. Did we want public funding? If they gave it to us, but we're not gonna go beg and plead, we're gonna ask our own people for it. We're gonna get donations and we'll do it by ourselves.

MN: And that's something you've, that was in 1969, the Pioneer Center?

JM: Uh-huh.

<End Segment 30> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.