<Begin Segment 14>

MN: Now, while all this was being done at the, this empty old Nishi Hongwanji building, in October 1985 you hired Nancy Araki, and where did Nancy have to work in for a while because there was no office?

BK: She worked in my office. We removed the doors to a closet and shoved a table back into that and she had the room inside the closet where she was sitting in there and the desk was sitting out. We used her as a temporary office for her. Yeah, it was, she got along. But Merit Savings was really interested in doing something for the community.

MN: So Nancy was working out of the Merit Savings closet for a while and then she moved into your other building at 941 --

BK: 941 East Third.

MN: -- East Third Street, and, and that's where you also said the Pacific Citizen had a office there also, with Harry Honda. Now, at the same time the redress movement is going on and you testified at the Commission on Wartime Relocation Internment of Civilians. Do you remember what you testified before them?

BK: I really believe that the, the government would have to also provide some educational funds, not only to reimburse individuals but to educate the public as to what happened. And I asked Paul Bannai, who was in charge of the hearings, I says I want some time to talk about that and submitted a paper, and I don't know, somewhere, but my whole pitch was not only does the government owe us money, individually, but it also has the obligation to, to educate the general public as to what they did to us, and we need educational funds that they should provide us where we could tell the story, the general public. A lot of people said, at that hearing, all they wanted was money for themselves, and I could hear people objecting. I says, well, they can object. I says there's nothing wrong with objecting, I says, but we need to tell the government what we want. It's not only individual money; it's educational money as well. A lot of people didn't agree with me, but I says if we don't get it out now we'll never get it.

MN: And of course redress, when redress was won it did have an education component to it, and the bill was signed in '88 and that's the same year that the museum hired Irene Hirano. Now, what was the first thing the board did when Irene got hired on? Do you remember that?

BK: No. The timing was when?

MN: 1988. And when you hired Irene, do you remember what you did as a board en masse?

BK: Give me some more information.

MN: Nancy told me you folks resigned. Do you remember doing that?

BK: They could've. I was too busy doing too many things at the same time. Yeah, I was busy. You, you see, in doing all the things that I was doing, I still had a family and each one of the kids was going to college, and I had to provide tuition for John going to SC, Miki going to the Fashion Institute, and Troy going to Yale, and I had to provide money for their spending and for tuition. So I was doing I don't know how many things at the same time, trying to make ends meet.

MN: So you don't remember doing this and, and, well what, the way Nancy tells me is that you folks on the board resigned to allow Irene to get her own board people, and that actually, she said it came from you.

BK: Oh, not from me. No, I think there was a, I think there was a movement on her part to get her own board members. And I was on the board all the time, but then there was a separate board that made certain decisions regarding salary and all. I didn't want to get involved in that, but I was on the board all the way through. They had a special committee on the board that I didn't serve on, but it made the decisions of, per salary, supporting her daughters going to school, whatever. I didn't get involved in that.

MN: Now, the museum had, had the grand opening on, was set for Saturday, April 30, 1992, and then a day before the Rodney King verdict came out and L.A. was in riots. What sort of contingency plans did the staff do and the board do when L.A. was just rioting?

BK: Well, we had all the chairs outside for the population to come. What we had to do was pull the whole program inside the Nishi Hongwanji, and it was, the ex-prime minister of Japan came, and what was his name? Anyway, he came and we pulled the program inside and still had our program, and he spoke and we had taken all the chairs and put 'em inside, so yes, it was a very, very sad event. I mean, in terms of what it could have been and what it wound up being. It was bad timing.

MN: Did a lot of people cancel coming?

BK: Lot of, it was an emergency. The whole city was under police guard and a lot of, a lot of people stayed at home, yeah. Yeah, we were there because we promised to be there and the ex-prime minister was there and the officials of, I mean, our board members were there, but the general public didn't show, 'cause they were told not to get involved. I think everybody was home listening to the radio and listening to, looking at TV.

MN: Nobody got injured going to the museum did they?

BK: No. No, there was no mishap.

MN: So when, once the museum moved into the old Nishi Hongwanji building and it was too small, so the staff started the phase two with a forty-five million expansion across the street. Was that really hard to raise the funds?

BK: Was that a...

MN: Was it hard to raise funds for the next, phase two?

BK: Raising funds is never easy. It's never easy, and I just feel that somebody was with us, helping us all the way. And we were still not over it because we still have a mortgage, but the mortgage has been reduced quite a bit and our present board is resolved on eliminating it possibly within the five year period. That's our goal. Course, we've had some dramatic changes we've had to make. We've had to reduce staff, we've had to cut all kinds of expenses, but luckily we've been able to eliminate our bank loans. We're free of bank loans. We have a couple of estates that came through that we didn't know about but helped us. We had to cut staff down because our overhead was just eating us up. We're still at a very, very low number in terms of hired employees, and it's gonna stay that way because we have no upswing. But we're holding our own and I got to tell you that the board of directors have been just amazing, and they've come through some very difficult periods and they've come up with personal funds that I don't know of any other organization that has done it. So we just have a mortgage to get rid of, and a mortgage isn't so bad. Everybody has a mortgage. The museum has a mortgage. I still have a mortgage. [Laughs]

<End Segment 14> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.