<Begin Segment 31>

MN: Tell us a little bit about the Pioneer Center.

JM: Well, that was a pathetic story out here, because (...) the Isseis, a lot of them, were living in these hotels. And I don't know if... they couldn't adjust, they didn't want to move to the suburbs, and some of them had no families to move to the suburbs. There was no welfare in those days. And, correction, there were, but they did, have no idea of how to apply for it. (...) There was no material, nobody to tell them, "Yes, you can receive it." How they remained alive is beyond me, you know. And there were stories of Isseis eating dog food and things of that nature. Nonexistent healthcare. You would see them sitting on the bus, bus benches. So one day they, Moe and his friends got a call that, from one of the older guys, older members, if they could help them move a desk, because they found it in the alleyway. It's either they found it in the alleyway and they wanted to bring it inside, or that it was so broken down they want to take it in the alley, I forgot what it was. But when Moe and his friends went up there, they were kind of appalled at the dumpy situation. So he called a meeting, they called a meeting, and we all met at the Far East, and we had people like Reverend Howard Toriumi, and the Reverend Kogi Sayama, and a lot of different people. And we decided that we'd form a, sort of like a Pioneer Center. And none of the... what would you call it? Bigwigs or the Chamber of Commerce, they all pooh-poohed it. "No," you know, like, "we don't want anything to do with it." They just shined us on. They just thought that we were just some, an incredible rabble. But we harnessed the energy of a lot of young people. Pioneer Project, which had about ten, twelve people in there, and we got the, we got people helping, like Hiro Saisho and Charlie Kamayatsu, those folks. On and on and on. And Reverend Toriumi was a giant, you know. Toriumi was one of the few people that could tell me and Moe what to do and how to do it. How high to jump, and we jump. [Laughs] And he was, to me, the most influential person in putting together the Little Tokyo Towers. It was his concept, his idea, and yet his name is never mentioned in relationship to the Little Tokyo Towers. So that was really, like, to me, really unfair.

MN: But go back to the Pioneer Center for me. You guys cleaned up the Sun Building?

JM: Uh-huh, we cleaned up a little place. The West L.A. JACL helped us out by giving us, I think they gave us around seven hundred bucks, which sent us on our way in terms of rent. So me and Moe worked there to clean the thing and paint it. And we went, like, forty-eight hours nonstop. And I came off of an evening class at Cal State Long Beach, man, we were like... when we had our grand opening, we never made it. I don't know if Moe made it or not, maybe he didn't. I just knocked out in my car, because I was just dead. But it was a wonderful experience. The Issei was really appreciative. Quite often, over and over, they would tell each other, "I'm glad I lived long enough to see this." We would take them out on different outings all over, we would take them out on flower-viewing trips. We established the center that was open for them that had books in there, that had information, we went after all the county agencies demanding that they give us bilingual material. "Give us, help us translate this into Japanese because we have people that need these services." And so we had all of those, "How to Apply for State Aid," this and this and this and this, all of it sitting in there, all translated. Then we would do Health Services Day, which we invited all the dentists and (optometrist) and all that, just show up and give back to the community on one day. And we had it on that Weller Street area, we'd block it off. Oh, we did so many different things for them.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.