<Begin Segment 21>

TI: So you've mentioned some names, so Art Miki, Roy Miki, Paul Kariya, is it Roger Obata, Cassandra...

OK: Kobayashi.

TI: Kobayashi.

RD: Is that Kariya any relation to the hockey-playing Kariyas?

OK: Yeah, they're distant cousins.

TI: That's good, that's good.

OK: In fact, Paul's wife, or Paul's sister and my wife worked together at a private lab in Vancouver. But Roger, I first met Roger when he was the president of the Japanese Canadian Centennial Committee in Toronto and they had major celebrations in the late '70s. Then he was intimately involved with the NACJ in the negotiations. In fact, when things on occasion weren't going too well, I would call Roger and bounce things off of him. And he was a very important player in the negotiations.

TI: Oh, interesting. So he was almost like your back channel to this, to do that.

OK: A little bit, yeah.

RD: You have a book in your collection called A Dream of Riches. It was put out about that, about that celebration.

OK: Celebration.

RD: That was, I think, their theme.

OK: Yeah, 1977.

TI: Well, which reminds me, I think Gordon Hirabayashi was pretty involved with that also.

OK: Yeah.

TI: Did you ever come in contact with Gordon?

OK: Uh-huh. In Vancouver, and he lived in, I think, in Kamloops.

RD: No, he was in Edmonton.

OK: Oh, in Edmonton, that's right. There was a...

RD: He was on the faculty there.

OK: Yeah. You're right. No, I'm thinking of somebody else. Gordon, in fact, I had dealings with him long after the, my involvement with the redress issues on multiculturalism issues, he was heavily involved in things in the Edmonton community. And the last time I had any dealings with him was at a conference of multiculturalism in Edmonton sometime in the late '90s or mid-'90s, I can't remember.

TI: And did he play a role in the Canadian redress?

OK: Not to my remembrance.

RD: He was down here, actually, in Seattle during much of that time.

TI: Yeah, he was, like, the honorary chair...

RD: I was here with him for a part of that time, we went to a lot of meetings together.

OK: Now, he may have been somebody that they were talking to in the, within the community. But he certainly wasn't at any meetings that I was at.

TI: Good. Any other, any other Japanese Canadians that sort of come to mind in terms of role, that played a role in this that you had to deal with? I'm not asking you to try to understand all the dynamics of the community, but just in terms of your role.

OK: Those were the main players that I had dealings with. There were others who were on the negotiating committee for the NAJC whose names... you know, I don't know if I can...

TI: Oh, that's okay. You don't have to go into that.

<End Segment 21> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.