Densho Digital Archive
Densho Visual History Collection
Title: Mark M. Nakagawa Interview II
Narrator: Mark M. Nakagawa
Interviewer: Jim Gatewood
Location: Los Angeles, California
Date: September 1, 2010
Densho ID: denshovh-nmark-02

[Correct spelling of certain names, words and terms used in this interview have not been verified.]

<Begin Segment 1>

JG: Alright, so we're back with Mark Nakagawa, Reverend of the Centenary Methodist Church. This is Jim Gatewood. Dana Hoshide is behind the camera. It is September 1, 2010. So what we're gonna do, Mark, is pick up where you left off, basically, and then transition more into your kind of, your ministry and the work you've been doing over the last several years, pastoring to the Japanese American community. And then I want to talk to you a little bit about the work you've been doing on the history of the church, the history of the Methodist church relative to, relative to the work it's done helping Japanese Americans during World War II and the resettlement era, as well, just talk a little bit about what you've been doing with that. And then finally, we'll conclude by talking about a subject that you and I have been talking about kind of in an informal way, about the future of the Japanese American community and the future of the Japanese American church, which is something I'm really interested in. So when we last left off, you were talking to me, you were in school. You were in seminary, and you were beginning to transition... you had gone to seminary not really intent on becoming a minister per se, but going to seminary for the experience of it. You spoke with someone who told you, you were talking about languages and your desire to learn Latin and Greek and someone had advised you you should probably learn Spanish and then it somehow ended up with Japanese, but I just want to talk to you a little bit about those, those years again at the PSR. And tell me, maybe we can start by having you tell us a little bit about this gradual transition towards the ministry.

MN: Okay, sure, Jim. As I have mentioned previously, my decision to enter seminary, and I entered after the fall of '82, wasn't with the intent of any particular vocation or profession in mind. I really just decided to enter seminary and go through the seminary experience for the experience. As I previously said, I felt that whatever I was gonna do with the rest of my life, I would most likely benefit from having the experience of a seminary education, so that really is the honest reason why I entered. Other people may have thought differently, but that really was the reason I decided to enter seminary. In the culture that we live in here in America where everything has to have an end game plan or there has to be an end product, that was really, I guess, counter cultural to most people's line of thinking as to why they would enter some kind of graduate program. Usually it's with a particular occupational goal in mind, but honestly for me, it was just for the experience. Now naturally, the thought of possibly entering the ordained ministry was there. I'm not gonna say that wasn't in my mind, but really that was not the primary reason I decided to enter into seminary.

My seminary experience at the Pacific School of Religion was very good, and for a native born Los Angelino who, who's idea of anathema is the Bay Area, I really enjoyed my time in Berkeley. And I laugh because I've always said that I've never been able to figure out where the, my ending up doing seminary work in the city of Berkeley was God's judgment on me or God's judgment on the city of Berkeley. Whatever the case is, that's how it happened, and PSR, being one of nine schools in a consortium -- the Graduate Theological Union there at Berkeley -- was a very good studying for one to do seminary work. Not only was I physically removed from everything familiar to me here in Southern California, but just academically it was a very good environment to be in. You've got, we had nine member seminaries there, plus you had UC Berkeley and some other educational institutions around Berkeley, so it was a very stimulating environment, not to mention just the people in Berkeley. It was just a very stimulating and positive environment to be in. So that kind of is the overall reason how I ended up there. The other thing that happened, and I have to say this, weather was also a factor of why, not so much how, but why I ended up doing my seminary work there in the East Bay. That previous year here in Los Angeles, we had what was for me a very cold winter. It was, like, fifty-five or sixty during the days and I think for most people in L.A. it was a very, very unusually cold winter. And so that following year as I was, I'd already made up my mind to go to seminary somewhere, and as I thought of some schools that I might apply to, on one level, when I really daydreamed I thought of maybe Harvard Divinity or Yale Divinity on the East Coast, and then I also thought about Iliff School of Theology, which is in Denver. It's a United Methodist school. But after thinking about those schools, the thought occurred to me that those are all cold weather cities in the wintertime, and since I had a hard time surviving in sixty, sixty-five degree weather here in L.A., how was I ever gonna survive, you know, being in Cambridge or New Haven or, God forbid, Denver? So by default I decided, among other reasons, to apply to PSR, but I had heard a lot of positive things about PSR and knew some, had some friends that went there. So I have to throw that in there, weather played a big part of how I ended up, why I ended up going to seminary in Berkeley.

JG: You know, Mark Twain said that the coldest winter he ever experienced was the summer in San Francisco. [Laughs]

MN: That's right. I, although that's San Francisco. On our side of the bay the summers were nice, but there some times when I went into San Francisco, and it was in the middle of summer, and it was kinda cold there. So that all worked out fine. As I mentioned, I really entered without any initiative to go into the ordained ministry, but my feelings did begin to change, probably around the second and definitely by the third year. I had gone through most of my formal studies. I had also at that time gotten to know some of the Nisei ministers and some of the Sansei ministers who were already in the ministry at that time, and they would invite me -- well not just me, but my other seminarian colleagues, Japanese American seminarians -- to some of the meetings there in Northern California. And as I got to know them and hear some of their stories, I really began to critically question, or maybe I should say entertain the idea of going into the ordained ministry. I also need to say that simultaneously my seminary studies, I guess, really challenged me to, again, critically examine my life and more importantly what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and so those series of events coming together at the same time started to transform my way of thinking from, in the beginning, not seriously thinking about the ordained ministry to starting to shift in that direction. Now, at the same time I did start to intern at a local church in Berkeley, a Japanese American congregation, the Berkeley Methodist United Church, which was pastored by then Reverend Dr. Grant Hagiya and that was actually his first appointment at the time. And that was a very positive experience for me. Even for someone who had grown up at Centenary, at Japanese American church, being in another church and, and where things were on the one hand very familiar to me, but on the other hand also involving different groups of people. Again, these are people from Berkeley, and other influences started to, again, challenge me as to what I wanted to do going forward with my life.

JG: Had you given any thought to other kind of vocations? What were some of the other, I don't know, prospects you were entertaining at the time?

MN: Well, prior to entering seminary, the four years from 1978 when I graduated UCLA 'til '82 when I entered PSR, the fall of '82, sure, I had thought about other fields. The traditional ones for Japanese Americans, law, medicine. I actually spent a year in the teaching program at UCLA, but then decided as much as I was interested in teaching, I thought at the time that I wanted to do something else before teaching. But all your traditional areas that most, in my opinion at least, most Sanseis of my generational time span were kind of urged or conditioned to undertake, they were safe, they were secure professions. I mean, that is if you were smart enough and intelligent enough to enter them. And so I thought about them, but again, just the thought of entering seminary and going through that experience, I felt even if I were ultimately interested in one of those professions, I felt the seminary education would be beneficial to me and whatever else I did with my life.

<End Segment 1> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 2>

JG: As you entered into seminary, did you, I want to ask this the right way, I mean, did you consider yourself a very religious person?

MN: No, not at all. No. And in fact, I've said that, not just with respect to my decision to enter seminary, but in my entire Christian life, I am not someone who had a Paul on the Damascus Road experience, what's been commonly called a conversion experience. That's not my experience at all. I am someone who was born and raised in the church and just took it for granted that church was a part of my life, but other than that, no, there was no big event that happened to me. It's just a gradual transformation that I experienced.

JG: So what was your, you've talked about this time you've had in PSR and I just want to get a sense, what was your most, maybe it's a collection of things, but what is your most memorable experience of your time in seminary?

MN: Gosh. There are a couple that come to my mind. One actually has to do with the issue of gender equality of homosexuality, and it was probably one of the experiences that changed my way of thinking. Not that I was, I had any one way of thinking about homosexuality and gender issues in the first place, but one experience in particular really challenged my thinking in that area and also challenged my thinking, or my ways of thinking in a lot of other areas. What had happened was I was taking a class, and this was in my second year of seminary studies. It was a class called "Religion and Society," and one day the professor said, African American professor who also was my counselor at the, during my whole seminary experience, and I'll come back to that in a few moments, but one day he said to the class, "For our next class session, we're gonna have a guest lecturer to come in and talk about what it is like to live a homosexual lifestyle in America." So I thought to myself, okay, that'd be kind of interesting. Well, the next class session came and the professor introduced the guest speaker actually, and lo and behold it was a classmate who I had been sitting next to throughout the semester. And needless to say, when I saw him come and take the podium my jaw just dropped. And he went on to talk about his experiences growing up as a gay person, but he told one very, very powerful story in his life that probably really shook me out of my comfort zone, and the story he told was this: he had been living in some town in Montana, and this was after college, I believe. And on a Valentine's Day weekend the local gay community there in that city, and that kinda shocked me to think that there was a gay community in a town in Montana, but anyway, this gay community was gonna have a Valentine's Day party. And so he decided to go, and that evening as he was walking to the location of the party he was mugged by a group of guys who beat him and in the course of beating him damaged one eye, and eventually that eye had to be removed and a false eye had to be put in. And when he told that story, it just stopped me emotionally in my tracks, because regardless of whatever my preconceived notions had been of, of gays and homosexuals, I just thought to myself, you know, man, he didn't do anything to deserve that And to think that he had been sitting next to me throughout that entire class semester up until that point and had never said anything about it. I mean, why would he, but he had never shared anything about it. But I could just only imagine how someone like him could sit through not just a class but go through an entire life and carry that burden and, and not let anyone know about it. And I have to say, that singular experience there that day in that class really challenged me, again, not just in my attitudes about gays and homosexuals, but about a lot of things in life, and then it continued to shape me, well, in that area. And then what comes after that, so a few years after that is when the first major outbreak of AIDS happened and how that was linked to the gay community and... but because of that prior experience of hearing that story and then having been sensitized to the plight of gay people, when the AIDS epidemic came along and certain forces in this society tried to link it directly to the gay and lesbian community, I really was ready to take that issue head on.

The other thing about that time was, and I mentioned the fact that the professor of that class who was African American was also my advisor, he had once made the comment in class, and this was during a class session in which he was talking about the African American church, he had once commented, or actually once questioned why, the black church is what we called it back then, why the black church was, in his opinion, slow to defend or advocate on behalf of gays and homosexuals. And it had nothing to do with whether one agreed or disagreed with the gay and homosexual lifestyle, but in his mind it had to do around issues of marginalization and being a minority status, of minority status. In other words, his argument was black churches, African Americans, more so than anybody, know what it feels like to be marginalized and oppressed and because of that we, African Americans that is, should be the first ones to come to the defense of gays and lesbians, because of their marginalization and oppression, regardless of whether or not we, regardless of whatever it is we think about the gay and lesbian lifestyle. And I had never even thought of, of those issues in that light, and to hear that coming from an African American who happened to be my professor as well as my counselor really, again, challenged me in a lot of areas of life, a lot of attitudes that I had held.

<End Segment 2> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 3>

JG: The Japanese American community, not to draw a blanket statement here... let me put it this way, there are elements of the Japanese American community that are fairly socially, socially conservative, and I'm wondering did that have an influence on you growing up? Was your family conservative on certain social issues like homosexuality?

MN: I'm sure they were, and I say that only because we never, my generation of Sanseis, I think I can honestly say we just never talked about certain things with our parents and... again, during my time growing up, issues like homosexuality, gay and gender issues just weren't, at least in our community, just weren't really up front on the radar screen. Even redress and the internment camps was not something they talked about often. I mean, they did talk about it, but it really wasn't until the, the redress movement in the mid '80s that they really came out of the closet on that. In terms of whether or not they were socially conservative, whether the Japanese American community was socially conservative, I would say, on balance, yes, but I've often said that degrees on the social political scale, whether you're liberal or conservative or in between, really have different, occupy different points on that scale. And even among racial-ethnic groups, I personally believe that there are differences. I mean, I once made the comment that you have white conservatives, you have black conservatives, but white conservatives and black conservatives, I don't believe, share the same space on the conservative end of the ideological spectrum. And I believe that's true for Japanese Americans. I think, yes, on balance I would say, at least for Japanese Americans growing up in my generation, our parents were conservative, we, to a certain extent, were and still are conservative, but our conservatism differs in degree, I believe, to conservatism when it is measured against other groups, because the issues are different and so therefore what's conservative for me on one issue might be liberal for someone else on, on that same issue.

JG: I guess the reason I'm asking, I mean, there was kind of a, a motive behind that question and it's really this, is that you've been very public in your, I guess, opposition to Prop 8 and you've been a, kind of a face for Asian Christianity, Asian pastors on the issue of same sex marriage and I'm just wondering if there's been any kind of, I don't know, would you call it backlash or something along those lines from within the community about your stance on same sex marriage?

MN: No. Surprisingly -- well, maybe not surprisingly, but there hasn't been any backlash. In fact, I've actually had people contact me to say they support me on, on my position. And even from people within the Asian American community who know where I stand and who are on the other side of the fence, they, they've told me, "I disagree with you, Mark, but I respect it." And so there's been this... what's the cliche? You know, this attitude, we agree to disagree on that issue, but no, there really hasn't been no backlash at all. And to be quite frank with you, Jim, I don't consider myself a crusader or anyone who's out in front on this issue. I mean, there are so many other people within the Asian American community who have risked much more than me in terms of comin' out on this issue. Just so happened that for whatever reasons I was one person who the leaders of the, the anti Prop 8 movement within the Asian American community chose with my permission to portray along those lines, and I think also what's at work here is, at least with respect to the issue of, of gender equality, homosexuality, gay and lesbian issues, Prop 8 here in California, I have a suspicion that most Japanese Americans, at the very least, sympathize with gays and lesbians. They may not agree, they may not know where they stand on the issue of the gay and lesbian lifestyle, and I think a lot of Japanese Americans are like a lot of people in general who are confused, whether it's that the gay lifestyle is a choice or just a given. I happen to think it's a given and it's not a choice, but regardless of what I think, I believe that a lot of Japanese Americans at the very least are sympathetic to the plight of gays and lesbians and the pressures and the hardships they face just living here in America. But what moves them to that point or that degree of sympathy, and not just sympathy but perhaps support for them, is our history and what we have been through, and yes, I'm talking about the internment, but even before the internment, a lot of instances of oppression and, and discrimination and segregation that Isseis and Niseis went through on their own. And it is that experience, or those experiences which, if nothing else, force us to at least be sympathetic with gays and lesbians and other people who are forced to struggle due to simply who they are, not for anything they have done.

You know, I always say when I'm in a group, particularly when I'm in a group of Niseis or Sanseis, on several occasions I've asked the question, "How many of you were in an internment camp or how many of you have grandparents or parents who were in an internment camp?" And inevitably every hand in the room will go up, and then I'll ask the question, "So what did any of you or your grandparents or parents, what did any of you do, or what is, what is it that they did to deserve being thrown into those internment camps?" And everyone will say they did nothing. Okay, which is the point that I always make. Well, in other words, your parents and your grandparents didn't deserve what they got, and the reality is very few people in life deserve what they get, very few people in life get what they deserve, and so why should we force very oppressive conditions on other groups of people when they have none, when they have done nothing to deserve the treatment that they get? And it's funny because whenever I do that little exercise with folks it really gets people to stop and question their own ways of thinking about how the world works or how it should work.

JG: Interesting. Interesting. Thank you for that. That was very enlightening.

<End Segment 3> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 4>

JG: Let's go back briefly and then we're gonna get you out of seminary 'cause eventually you have to graduate, but you had talked a little bit about these conversations you were having with Nisei pastors. You were interning at a Japanese American church, working with Grant Hagiya, and I'm just curious, this kind of, these conversations, it sounds as if this was kind of the culmination of moving into the ministry, and I'm just wondering if you could talk about that leading up to your ordination?

MN: Sure. Over the course of my seminary years, and even after seminary when I started to really pursue the ordained ministry, I was fortunate, and I really have to say I was fortunate to have at that time, and not just me, but the other Sansei seminarians and clergy, we were fortunate to still have in our midst, and to a certain extent still have in our midst today, Nisei, and I think there were a few Issei pastors still around, who had been through the wars and who had struggled to pastor churches before the war. And even before the war, we're talkin' about guys, pastors who led our churches or who established our churches during the Depression and then ministered to people in the camps and then after the end of the camps and the return to the West Coast and resettlement and all that were the ones who really had to build the churches back up. It's just, hearing those stories about the struggles that they went through really had a profound effect on me and really, again, made me question what was important to me and what I wanted to do. Some of those pastors were pastors that I had had growing up here at Centenary, yet when I was a kid growing up, or even during my teenage years growing up, didn't know anything about them other than that they were the pastor. But as I started to hear these stories it really made me question what was important to me and, and even the deeper question to me was, you know, these pastors sacrificed and struggled for myself and others, so then, okay, so Mark, what are you gonna do with your life? Now, I think anybody in any line of work, any vocation, needs to ask that question as well, and I know there are Sansei lawyers, doctors, teachers, engineers, others who I have spoken with who really take that question seriously and give back to the community in their own ways, but I think being in the church and knowing also through these stories and other things I have read about what these ministers have gone through really had a profound impact and influence on me.

One story in particular that really gripped me at the time I heard it had to do with one of our retired Nisei pastors, actually a couple of Nisei pastors who are now retired, Bishop Roy Sano who was Reverend Roy Sano here at Centenary over a generation ago, and Bishop Sano always told the story about his experience during the internment camps, but how he was able to leave camp and attend a church summer camp somewhere, I believe back in Pennsylvania, and it was there that he made the decision to deepen his faith and enter the ministry. Another story that comes to my mind is that of the Reverend Lloyd Wake who, whose family is from central California and during the -- and whose family, like a lot of other Niseis in the Central Valley was a farming family -- but how during the farm worker movement in the '60s and '70s, how Reverend Wake sided with the farm workers while the rest of his family, being farmers, or as we call them now, growers, were on that side of the issue, and how it caused a lot of struggle within the Wake family. And yet Lloyd, Reverend Wake, Lloyd Wake, knowing that this was gonna cause division within his family, stuck to his faith and his ministry and continued on. And it was also Lloyd who later on went on to pastor, to be on staff at Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco, and during that infamous shoot out in the mid '70s, I believe it was 1978, with the Symbionese Liberation Army and the FBI, Patty Hearst, one of the untold stories of that episode -- I mean, everybody heard about Patty Hearst and knows what happened with her, but there was a Sansei girl who was a part of that group, Wendy Yoshimura, and the story that is told is that Wendy Yoshimura ran down the street after getting out of the bank building where the shootout was held, ran to Glide Memorial United Methodist Church where Reverend Wake took her in and gave her sanctuary there and stayed by her side throughout that whole ordeal, not just that day, but long afterwards. And it's stories like that that really influenced me, and I have to say, compelled me to really ask some deep, hard questions about what I wanted to do with my life.

JG: So in this process of kind of asking these hard questions, you finally made a decision to move forward with this. Was it any one thing or was it, I mean, when did you finally realize this is what you wanted to do?

MN: You know, that's a hard question for me to answer, simply because, Jim, again, there really was no one earth-shattering event, but somewhere along the line I just made the decision to do it, and I guess it had to do with, again, my seminary studies, a chance for me to, number one, deepen my faith, but in the process of deepening my own Christian faith, clarifying my own understanding of, of God and Jesus Christ and the church and along with that my own identity. Perhaps one of the stories that, biblical stories, that is, that has shaped my calling in the ministry is the well-known story of Moses and the burning bush, where Moses, where God calls Moses to go out and be the leader of the Hebrew people and Moses says, "Well, you know, God, I don't know how to speak," and God says, "Don't worry about that. I will lead you and tell you what to say, put the words in your mouth." And then the famous question and answer, Moses says to Yahweh, "When people ask me, 'Who appointed you leader?' what shall I say?" And God's response, "Tell them, 'I am who I am,'" which also is translated in the Hebrew, "I will be who I will be." And that story, as well as other biblical stories, in a lot of ways helped me clarify my decision to go into ministry, but more than that to really understand that my calling was to the Japanese American church. And not that it was ever gonna be anything else. I mean, I never consciously thought I would just go into ministry and not serve in a Japanese American church. If anything, I figure yeah, that's what I'll do, but that, that one story in particular really did it, does it for me and continues to this day.

<End Segment 4> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 5>

JG: So you graduate from PSR and someone who is, is as thoroughly Southern Californian as anyone I know, gets his first assignment in rural Sacramento. Tell me about that experience.

MN: [Laughs] Yeah, to show you and to really prove that my decision to become ordained was really not contrived and not preconceived or anything, but really was a process that finally culminated into me doing it, the proof in the pudding was that I was very naive about the whole appointment process in the United Methodist Church and I just assumed that I would come back to Southern California, but the way it was explained to me was that, "Mark, we need you here in Northern California and so we'll, you'll start off in Northern California and, and then after that as time goes on, we'll see what we can do, if you want to move elsewhere." So I just took it on faith that's what I would do, so... and now, the story inside of that, though, is really the critical piece. What had happened was there were three of us Sanseis who graduated from PSR in May of '85, 1985, and all three of us knew we were gonna be appointed to churches in Northern California. In fact, the other two, Reverend Roger Morimoto and Reverend Keith Inouye, were from Northern California. They had no problem with it. I really didn't have a problem with it either, but although my first, my natural inclination was to want to come back down to Southern California. But here's what had happened: we had graduated in May and no matter where we were gonna get assigned our appointments didn't start until July 1. I had decided to take a trip to Japan after graduation. I had never gone to Japan,I figured now's the time to do it, and so I made plans to travel to Japan. And so I left here for what turned out to be a ten-day trip to Japan, not knowing what, where my assignment was gonna be, other than that it would be somewhere in Northern California. When I got back I was informed that I would be assigned to a church in Sacramento, and I said okay, that's great. I didn't really know anything about Sacramento. I had been there actually back in junior high school, or maybe it was high school. I had been there through a YMCA Youth and Government program. But the only thing I knew about Sacramento was that you had to go through there to get to Reno. That's about all I knew, other than the fact that it was the state capitol. But what had happened was while I was in Japan, the cabinet, which is the group of superintendents that decide where you go, actually wanted me to go to our Japanese American church in Dinuba, which is in central California. However, since they couldn't contact me, because I was in Japan, they decided to place one of my classmates, Reverend Keith Inouye, there, and there were actually two churches that were gonna get new appointments in the Central Valley. One was in Dinuba, the other was our church in Fresno. And they decided to appoint Roger Morimoto to the church in Fresno and they decided to appoint me to the church in Sacramento, at least this is how I heard it came down. Now, why they would've needed to consult with me is beyond me, and I'm, all three of us are fresh out of seminary and it's not like we have any status on the totem pole, but when I came back I learned that I was gonna be going to Sacramento and I said fine and came back to L.A. for a couple weeks just to pack my things and headed up to Sacramento.

I vividly remember the day I arrived in Sacramento. The church there had arranged for me to live in an apartment downtown on Riverside Drive near Broadway, which was the downtown part of Sacramento, and my apartment was three blocks away from what is essentially the Japantown of Sacramento. It's actually Tenth Street. There is no geographic Japantown in Sacramento, but on this stretch of Tenth Street you had a manju shop, a Japanese run barbershop, a fish store, a grocery store, a Japanese restaurant, and to the extent that Sacramento had a Japantown, this was it. And so I vividly remember driving into Sacramento the day that I arrived in town there. It was, God forbid, a hundred and five degrees, and showed up at this apartment, which actually was inhabited by several other Nisei and Issei women, one actually right below me. And I had heard that there was this manju shop in Sacramento that was famous not so much for its manju but for its snow cones, and it happened to be this manju shop on Tenth Street. So I immediately headed over there and, lo and behold, since it was a hundred and five degrees that day, there was a line comin' out of this manju shop and, and you have to understand, this shop was very, very small. Really, I don't think the store front was more than a hundred square feet. Growin' up in my uncle's liquor store, I kind of had an idea of square footage sizes of stores. And so there I am, my first day in Sacramento, standing outside eating my snow cone, and I also had a map of Sacramento spread out over the hood of my car, just trying to get my bearings, and that was my introduction to Sacramento and how I actually got started there. And for the first three months I lived downtown there. It ended up being very good. I got to know my bearings around the city.

The Japanese American, there were two or three Japanese American ladies in the building who kind of took me in as their adopted son, I guess, and made sure that I was taken care of. Church members came by as well, and it happened to be in a part of Sacramento where a lot of the old time Niseis lived, and so they knew where I lived and came by. Eventually I moved out to a more suburban part of the community where a lot of the church members also lived and then continued on living there and serving the church there. So it was a fun time there, and it really was a very positive experience overall. I really... the other thing was, had I gone to one of those other churches, I would've been the solo pastor, but in Sacramento I actually was the associate, meaning I served under a senior minister, Reverend Gary Barbury, who was a Caucasian pastor who had served actually the Japanese American church in Fresno. So starting out serving as an associate was a very good thing for me. I got to learn the ropes, and Reverend Barbury was very good about pacing me in terms of my development and teaching me things about pastoring in the Japanese American church. So overall it was a very good situation to me. I, I laugh because I tell people, with all due respect to the people that, in Dinuba and Fresno, I must've been in Kyoto at a temple pitching incense at the time that the cabinet, the superintendents decided to send me to Sacramento. It had to have been more than just fate that, that guided that whole, that whole process there.

JG: Yeah, wow, Dinuba. I've never even heard of Dinuba.

MN: [Laughs] Right. I didn't either until I heard that I was almost gonna go there, and over the years, we have some church members here who are from the Central Valley and I joke with them about Dinuba and they say, "Yeah, Mark, I know what you mean. I grew up there." But just the way that all worked out, really, I hate to sound cliche about it, but it was God's hand that guided that whole process. It had to be more than just serendipity or fate or just a consequence. Something deeper than that.

<End Segment 5> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 6>

JG: That must've been a pretty amazing time, just in terms of your development. I'm wondering, what were some of the unique challenges and what were some of the unique kind of joys of that position?

MN: You know, there, let's start with the joys 'cause there was just many more joys than challenges. It was just a very exciting time to be in the city of Sacramento. Number one, the church I was at was a fairly large church, and the people in it, particularly the Niseis who were in it, were very active in the city of Sacramento and politically in the city and the state. In addition, it was a very exciting time politically in California. Willy Brown was running the state legislature, the assembly, and although I really was not much of a, really had no political knowledge at all, just being in Sacramento, you couldn't help but learn about politics and how politics were... the church I was at also had a U.S. congressman as its member, the late Robert Matsui, who had a very, very profound influence on my life personally. So it was just a very exciting time to be in the city. The other thing, the redress movement was building up steam and during my time there the redress movement really culminated, and in fact we ended up having one of the ceremonies for the redress recipients at our church, and in fact that was the ceremony held in Sacramento. Bob Bratt, the head of ORA, Office of Redress Administration, came out and obviously participated in the service. So just a total intersection of a lot of events that were particular to the Japanese American community, particular to people involved in politics and that I was personally interested all just converged at that time, intersected with one another there. So it was a very exciting time, personally, religiously, politically, all the way around. One thing that really surprised me was when the redress bill was signed in 1988 and all the redress, the statistics came out, I saw that Los Angeles far and away had the largest number of eligible redress recipients, over four thousand, but the number two city on the list was Sacramento with something like 2800 or 2900 eligible redress recipients, and I was surprised when I saw that. All of the other cities that I thought would've ranked higher in terms of Japanese American population, you know, i.e. San Jose, Seattle, Chicago, San Francisco, were way far down the list. [Coughs] Excuse me. Now, part of that, I think, had to do with the fact that those other areas also had suburbs and other bedroom communities that were separate cities in and of themselves. For example, down on the San Jose, well, the peninsula there in Northern California, yeah, you've got San Jose, but you've got also Santa Clara, San Mateo, Sunnyvale, Fremont, which are cities in and of themselves, and so the Japanese American populations there were defined by those respective cities rather than being merged all into the stats for San Jose. Same thing, I think, with San Francisco and the East Bay. You had smaller communities with Japanese Americans living there, so their numbers were split out among those different communities. But for Sacramento, most of the Japanese Americans at that time lived within the city limits of Sacramento, and so the second largest, second highest number of Japanese Americans on the whole list of eligible redress recipients was right there in Sacramento, and that's what really impressed me was the demographics there. And that became more evident the more and more community functions I began to attend, the more and more weddings and funerals I started to officiate, the more and more I began to meet folks up there. I soon realized that, yeah, there are a lot of Japanese Americans there in Sacramento and, and they were, again, a lot of 'em were involved in state government, in city government. Lot of 'em were socially active, socially conscious and it was something that I was just not exposed to or used to. A lot, there were some Japanese Americans who I've met who were very high up on the political scheme of things. And it just really impressed me to no end, and that really opened my eyes to the larger world and especially the larger Japanese American world that I had never really seen before.

<End Segment 6> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 7>

JG: What role were you playing in kind of, I mean just, again, getting back to this idea of your ministry and your activism. We talked about that in our last interview. What effect, couple ways at this, what, what was your role during the redress movement as part of this church? What effect did that have on you as a minister in this community?

MN: I personally had no direct role in the redress movement, but there were some events held along the way that ended up being held our church, the Sacramental Japanese United Methodist Church, and also because of the fact that we had church members who were active in both of the JACL chapters in Sacramento -- there were actually two JACL chapters in town, the Sacramento chapter and the Florin chapter, and I actually ended up being a member of the Florin chapter -- but because we had church members who were very active JACL members and because the JACL was out in front on the redress issue, the Methodist church happened to be the venue where several events around the redress issue took place. And I don't know if other organizations were asked to host these events; I just know that we were approached a lot and we just said yes. I don't know that we could've said no, but quite frankly, I have to say that I felt it was important for us as a church to have some involvement in these issues, even if it just meant that we were the site to host, say, a forum on redress. I just felt it was important for us, as the church, to be visible. Now, granted I think the redress movement was a very safe issue for us to be involved in, but still, I felt that as the church it was important for us, from the standpoint of being what we now call a faith community, to be involved in this issue, again, even if it just meant letting the JACL come in and use our space to host an event. I just felt we needed to do it, and, and not only with regards to redress, but, but other issues that happened during that time as well.

Another thing that was happening in Sacramento during that time was the city was getting a large influx of immigrants both from the Southeast Asian community and from the Romanian community. This was during the time when Romania was having a lot of political fallout. The president, or prime minister of Romania, Dascalescu, was creating a lot of havoc there and causing a lot of Romanians to flee, and a lot of Romanians ended up coming to Sacramento at the time because a lot of them were tradesmen and Sacramento at that time was going through a big construction boom, so that's why they ended up coming to Sacramento for jobs. And we ended up actually, the Methodist church ended up actually allowing a Romanian Christian group to use our church as worship space, to get them going, and I believe that church ended up going out on their own and establishing their own church in town.

JG: Interesting.

MN: So we were involved in a lot of ways in the larger community, not just the, our own Japanese American community, as well. I do also need to say that having a congressman as a member of the church and particularly one like Bob Matsui, Congressman Robert Matsui, was very, very positive for us. Needless to say, he was one of the more active members of Congress, not just on redress, but a whole host of issues, and fortunately during my time there I was able to talk with him and he actually brought me back to Washington, D.C. on a couple of occasions and showed me around and introduced me to some folks who most likely I would've never met and, and was shaped and influenced by them as well. And again, it opened my eyes and gave me some experiences that I doubt if I would've, I doubt if I ever would've been able to have such experiences had it not been for my involvement in the church. Unfortunately, Congressman Matsui passed away much too soon a few years ago and, but I will eternally, forever be thankful for having met him and having him be a part of life.

JG: That's wonderful.

MN: And you know, it's one of these things, I laugh because people always say that religion and politics shouldn't mix or the church shouldn't get involved in politics, but for me it was because of the church that I got my feet wet in politics, and as a matter of fact, former congressman and Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta once told me that it was because of the Church that he got involved in politics. The story on Norm Mineta is that he was an active member of Wesley United Methodist Church -- the Mineta family to this day is one of the, continues to be one of the strongest supporters of Wesley United Methodist Church, which is our Japanese American sister church in San Jose, right down there on Fifth and Jackson, Fifth Street and Jackson in downtown San Jose, Nihonmachi. But Norm Mineta actually got his start in politics when he was asked, a number of years ago when he was running his insurance agency, he was asked to become the treasurer of the San, Santa Clara County of Churches, as an active layperson of the Wesley United Methodist Church. And it was during that time, as treasurer of the Santa Clara County of Churches, that, as I believe the story was told to me, a spot on the city council, a seat on the city council opened up and he was encouraged to run for it, and he did, and he won. And it was also during that time, following his election to the city council that, I believe, the mayor of San Jose unexpectedly died, and again, he was encouraged to run for the mayor, the mayoral seat, and he did and he won that. And it was from there that he went on to get elected to Congress, and then later on to become transportation secretary. But again, Norm Mineta, always credited his involvement in the church in giving him his start in politics through the Santa Clara County of Churches. So in its own way, after having met Mineta, Norm Mineta, during that time and having him tell me that story, again, it just broadened my perception of the church and in particular my perception of, of Japanese Americans in the community in ways that my views and my experiences had never been broadened before and might never have been broadened were it not for the church.

JG: So when are you running for mayor?

MN: When am I running for mayor? [Laughs] In another lifetime. In another lifetime. My, I'm happy being who I am, just being a pastor in, in the church. Even, it's funny, when I left Northern California, when I left Sacramento to come back to Southern California back in 1994, my thought was, well, I'm leaving politics for good. I'm leaving Sacramento, I'm leaving politics for good, don't have to get involved in politics ever again, not that it was a problem or a burden, but I figured I'm coming back to L.A., I'll just go on, pastor the churches, but now I find myself here at Centenary, what, a stone's throw from city hall and over the ten years I've been here at Centenary have had opportunities and have been asked to get involved locally here in some of the politics here in, well, in Little Tokyo, but also in downtown Los Angeles. And so what goes around comes around. It's just like I'm back full circle. One of those things that makes me laugh, again, and... but I think back to those days, my first, again, my first church, my first appointment, and the experiences that I had there that I've carried with me over the years are experiences that I'm able to use here as well, and so I'm, I'm really deeply, really and eternally grateful for those experiences.

JG: So how long were you at the church in Sacramento?

MN: I was there for nine years from 1985 to 1994.

<End Segment 7> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 8>

JG: Okay, and then tell me about your next appointment. You, you, that's when you returned to Southern California and took up the, a position at West L.A. United Methodist Church.

MN: Right. I was fortunate to be appointed to the West Los Angeles Church in 1994, and, and again, to come back down to Los Angeles, to return home to Los Angeles in 1994, and I was at the West Los Angeles Church for six years, from 1994 up until 2000, and again, that appointment, the way that appointment happened was done in a very unorthodox way. It was an appointment that was across conference boundaries. [Coughs] Excuse me. I was literally changing conferences and, which meant that I had to get permission from the bishop of the other conference, meaning the bishop here in this conference, who was Bishop Roy Sano. Well, what had happened was I had actually sought permission from my district superintendent up north to seek other church opportunities beyond that conference, and thankfully my district superintendent then, Reverend Ron Swisher, gave me permission to contact the bishop's office down here, and really what happened was I called down here, left a voicemail, just expressing interest that I was open to any possible church opportunities that might come up down here, and a few days later I, received a call. In fact, I will never forget this; I was on my way to visit a family up in Sacramento, actually to talk about them, to talk with them about some funeral arrangements. The husband, the father had passed away; I had gotten called to do the funeral. So as I was driving to visit them my cell phone went off at that time, and so I pulled over to the side of the road, answered the call, and it was actually the superintendent here, Reverend Dr. Robert Smith, of the Los Angeles district who was calling me. Asking me, actually not asking me but telling me that Bishop Sano would like to appoint me to the West Los Angeles Church, and I thought to my mind, wow, how is this happening? Because I knew that just the previous year the West L.A. Church had gotten a new pastor, Reverend Dr. Ken Heaton, and so, and plus they had had an associate as well, so I was wondering how that was all working out, but anyway, Robert, Reverend Dr. Robert Smith said that Bishop Sano would like to appoint me to the West Los Angeles Church and would I be interested. And I said yes. [Coughs] Excuse me. I had known about the West L.A. Church. In fact, growing up the youth group here at Centenary, we had done activities with the youth group at the West L.A. Church. Back in the seventies, one year one of my classmates, in fact, my freshman year at UCLA, '73, one of my classmates in my English 1A class was Glenn Murakami, whose father was Harry Murakami, who was then the pastor of the West L.A. Church, and so anyway, I immediately jumped at that opportunity, and to make a very long story short, I was appointed to the West L.A. Church beginning in 1994. And so I was there from 1994 to 2000.

JG: Okay. How, how did your role and responsibilities change with your new appointment?

MN: I was appointed to the West L.A. Church as the senior pastor because we had, we had an, actually a Japanese language associate, who was Reverend Dr. Richard Kuyama who's my associate in Japanese language now here, and I had known Richard, we go back to the time when he came over from Japan. Actually, our Japanese American caucus was instrumental in bringing him over from Japan back in the late eighties, and he actually started out in Northern California as a Japanese language pastor at our Japanese language congregation in, both in Berkeley and Oakland, so I had known Richard from his time when he started out in Northern California. Also, on my first trip, on that very first trip to Japan that I took in 1985, I actually stayed with Richard and his family for several days during that time because I had previously met him back in the late '70s when he came out to do an internship here at the old Centenary Church with Reverend Dr. Jonathan Fujita, who was the Japanese language minister back at Centenary throughout the '70s and the '80s. So my history with Richard, or our history, had gone back a number of years, so coming to West L.A. in '94, knowing that he was the Japanese language pastor there in that way made it easier. I had an associate who I knew and it's not like there was gonna be this honeymoon period between myself as a senior pastor and, and an associate pastor who I didn't know. Also, knowing some of the members at the West L.A. Church helped me there. Some of the Sanseis there were folks I had gone to UCLA with and so it was good to have some familiar faces there. Also knowing some of the parents of other Sanseis who I knew either at UCLA or growing up with UC, growing up with, during my UCLA days and who were from the West L.A. area also helped a lot. So it wasn't as if I was coming to a church where I didn't know anybody, which is how it was when I had gone to Sacramento. I knew some members there and that made it easier. Also just knowing the lay of the land, knowing the West L.A. area, having lived out in West L.A. during that four year period between my graduation from UCLA and entering the seminary in 1982, just made it a whole lot easier. It's not like I had to know, learn my way around town, a new town or anything. I could just hit the ground running, so that was very good in that respect.

<End Segment 8> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 9>

JG: So what I want to, we're kind of in the last phase of our discussion, which I've really appreciated, and your, your candor and openness are always, it's always such a pleasure to speak with you. What I want to do is kind of, not to shortchange your experiences at West L.A., but really kind of bring it up to the present and talk about your role here at Centenary Methodist Church. And I'm, I'm wondering if you could talk a little bit about how you came into this position and you felt returning to the church in which you grew up as its kind of senior minister?

MN: My coming to Centenary was, in my perception of things at least, similar to how I was appointed to the church in Sacramento and, and similar to how I was able to come back to West L.A. My coming to Centenary was an unusual move. It happened, just the fact that it happened is unusual. Very rarely, at least in the United Methodist Church, but I think this is true for most churches and at least mainline Protestant denominations, very rarely does a person get to come back and pastor his or her own church. I guess it's got somethin' to do with that statement of Jesus, "A prophet has no honor in his own country." And so just the fact that it happened is very unusual. To the extent that I ever thought I would be able to come back to Centenary, I just figured it would happen during the latter part of my career -- and who knows, maybe I am in the latter part of my career -- but I thought it would happen much later than it did. However, the fact that it happened under the episcopacy of Bishop Roy Sano makes all the sense in the world. Bishop Sano, as I said previously, was the pastor here at Centenary forty years ago at the former church out on 35th and Normandy, and so I knew him and knew of him from back then.

Also, in a way I unconsciously skipped over this, but going back to my days at Pacific School of Religion, Roy Sano was also a professor at Pacific School of Religion at that time. Gosh, how could I ever forget to bring that in? And it was during his time at PSR that he got elected to the episcopacy and actually started out his first eight years being the bishop of the Rocky Mountain Annual Conference with its office in Denver, but Roy Sano was a professor at PSR back during my time and prior to that he was the chaplain at Mills College up in Oakland, so because I was fortunate to be at PSR when he was there, we had reconnected during that time. And so from that time on he and I had kept in touch with each other, or at least knew what each other was doing, him more than me, and so I guess him being the bishop here in this conference and also the year 2000 was the year that he was retiring, I just have a feeling that had factored into his decision to appoint me back here. As a matter of fact, I talked about how I got the call from the L.A. superintendent up in Sacramento who said that, "Mark," who asked me if I would like to come to the West L.A. Church, well, I find out about my appointment coming to Centenary in a similar way, also, actually in some ways it's even more acute than that, I received a call one evening, again, I was in the car, my cell phone went off, and it was the Los Angeles district superintendent who by then was Reverend Dr. Otis Fentry, unfortunately now the late Reverend Dr. Otis Fentry, but Dr. Fentry called to tell me that Bishop Sano is appointing me to Centenary. And I vividly remember Dr. Fentry's words, he says, "This is an appointment that's coming from the bishop's office," which implicitly meant this was not an appointment coming from the district superintendent, okay? [Laughs] So I distinctly remember when I heard this I just said, "Oh," and I mean, what else can I say? And Dr. Fentry said, "Well, we'll be in touch with you. We have to set up an appointment with the Centenary staff parish committee," which is essentially the, the human resources committee, the HR committee of the church, and so that's how that appointment happened. So I was shocked.

Again, I was shocked that, number one, it was happening, number two, that it was happening so soon in, in my view of how these things usually work, but that it was also happening coming straight from the bishop's office and not from the superintendent himself. Now, I'd like to think, and I'm sure that Superintendent Fentry didn't have a problem with me coming to Centenary. Now the other side of the coin was Reverend Dr. Grant Hagiya, who was the senior pastor here at this time, was going to be appointed this district superintendent to Los Angeles, so, and I already knew that was in the works, so that... and the other thing that I thought about at that time was I really didn't think that it was in the cards for me to come to Centenary at that time, if ever, because there were at least several other pastors, and in particular, several other Sansei pastors who I could think of right off the top of my head that were far up the pecking order than I was to be considered to come to Centenary. I mean, these are Sansei pastors who had more experience being a senior pastor, and even among my contemporaries, others who were in the ministry the same amount of time as me and all that, they had more experience being either a senior pastor or a solo pastor than I had, because, again, I started out as an associate in Sacramento and then came to West L.A. as the senior, but there were some other Sansei pastors who started off as a solo pastor and then in their next church were also solo pastors or senior pastors, so from that standpoint were higher up the totem pole than I was in terms of, I guess, eligibility requirements, having the experience to pastor a large church like Centenary, so for those reasons I was also shocked that I was being appointed to come back here. But at any rate it happened and things have, have turned out the way they've turned out and it's been a very positive experience.

That quote from the gospels, though, Jesus's quote, "A prophet has no honor in his home country," I did think of that for a while, but it also reminded me of a conversation I had had with a professor back during my seminary days. As a matter of fact, it was a, my professor in New Testament scriptures, Dr. Wilhelm Wolner, and for whatever reason I remember in, in one of our classes, it was after class one time and we were talking about, I guess, the class session that day or something, but I remember him asking me, just as a professor who was interested in his students, nothing in particular about the class or the coursework, but he asked me what my intentions were. And I said, "Well, Dr. Wolner, I might pursue ordained ministry and who knows? Maybe I might have a chance to go back to Los Angeles and pastor my home country, but there's one thing that concerns me about that." And he said, "What is it?" And I said, "Well, you know, Jesus has his line in the Gospel of Luke, 'A prophet has no honor in his home country,' and so for me to go back to Los Angeles at some point to pastor my home, to pastor my home church might be a problem." And he had a very good response to that. He says, "What you have to do is establish yourself in another church for a number of years and make that your home country, then you can go back to Los Angeles." So when I thought about that, in a way, that's kind of how it has turned out here at Centenary. It's not like I graduated seminary last year and was a greenhorn and right away got appointed back to my home church. I have known of pastors to whom that happened and unfortunately, in at least some of those cases, not with very good results. But in my case I had been away from Centenary for, what, at least since 1982 when I had gone off to seminary, and so it was a good, what, at least fifteen years or so before I did really come back, so in that sense I had been able to establish other parts of the world as my home country before coming back here to Centenary. And the other thing that had happened within Centenary itself is that the church had moved. The church had physically moved from the old location on 35th and Normandy, which is where I had grown up and where that is the context, those are all the memories of Centenary that I had had, but it had left that location back in the mid-'80s to come back down here to Little Tokyo. So in many senses the Centenary that I was being appointed to and coming home to was not the same Centenary that I had left back in the early '80s. Sure, there were a lot of familiar faces here and sure, Centenary still had the bazaar and a lot of activities that it traditionally had, but in many ways there were new faces here, new geography, a whole new way of doing things, and so in a larger sense it really was a different and a new church for me, a new, a different and a new Centenary for me to come back to. It wasn't the same church.

<End Segment 9> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 10>

JG: In many ways -- and you might disagree with this assertion and I'd be very happy to hear if you, if you do -- but having done work on the history of Japanese American Methodist churches, it, it's not a huge leap to suggest that this really is in some ways the, I don't know, the seat of, at least in Southern California, of Japanese American Methodism. I mean, this really is probably one of, if not the most important church in the network, at least one of the most important, and I'm just wondering how that has factored into your leadership role and into the work you do here and into the kind of unique, and I mean, this is kind of leading to this idea of thinking about the future of the Japanese American community and thinking about the future of Japanese American churches, 'cause you and I have had conversations offline from the interview about the changing demographics of this community, and you've noted that this isn't the church that you grew up in, and I'm just wondering if you could talk about, a little bit about some of the, I don't know, some of the issues you're contending with here as the minister of this church, whether it's with the kind of the demographic transition with the passing of the Nisei or an, being in an, kind of in an urban setting, skid row is two blocks away from here. So I've just, like, asked you a huge, huge question, but tackle it however you want and we'll, we'll kind of unpack it a little bit.

MN: [Laughs] I appreciate these questions, and you know, Jim, that these are questions I think about every day, every, every waking moment, and, but let me start with the first part of the question, about Centenary being the seat of Japanese American Methodism, I think that's how you put it, or being the historic church and all this. Gosh, I know I'm, no matter what I say I'm gonna offend or upset some people, some of the pastors. Let me say this, growing up as a kid at Centenary, Centenary's always special to me and it was special to Japanese Americans here in Los Angeles and I just knew intuitively or for whatever reason, just growing up in Centenary, that Centenary was a very important place in the Japanese American community, even when we were over on Normandy and 35th, which for the, a generation ago, the Seinan area, the Crenshaw area was a very, very well-known and very, very popular place for Japanese Americans to grow up in and to hang out. So I kind of had that sense growing up, but Centenary's influence, or perceived importance, maybe that's a better term, really didn't start to hit me until I had left the church, gone to seminary and then gone out and started my, my pastoring, because along the way I would hear thing from other, people at other churches. I would hear comments like, "Wow, Centenary, that's the cathedral church," or "Centenary, that's the big church, " or "Centenary, every, every Japanese American minister has, every Japanese American minister who's anybody has served that church." [Laughs] I would hear comments like that, and whether or not I agreed with them, whether or not they were true, it really, I have to say, along the way, and these were people who were living in Sacramento or people I would meet from Fresno or people I would meet from Seattle or Denver who I would hear these comments from, and it wasn't until then that I really realized how much of an image Centenary had, not just here in Los Angeles, but regionally and, and nationally as well. And naturally, it was very nice to hear those comments, but, but again, it really made an impact on me when I started to hear these comments from people who were hundreds or thousands of miles removed from Centenary yet knew about Centenary in some, in this way. So let me say that, for what it's worth, do I agree with a lot of those comments? But let me just say it's nice to hear those comments and I appreciate them and I only hope that to the extent that there's any truth in those comments that, since I'm the one here now, that I can carry on that tradition and that legacy of faith that this church, both in its former location and the current location, has imparted over the generations, over the centuries, I guess, by now I have to say.

With regards to where we are today and our role here in the community and what I perceive to be the future of the community, those issues really form the sixty-four thousand dollar question, not just of Centenary, but I think of all Japanese American churches and I would even go so far as to say of all Japanese American organizations. Whether you're talking about the JACL or the VFW or the community cultural centers, the museums, whatever, I think those issues all put us in the same boat, and here's where I come out on that: there was a time when the Japanese American identity was rooted in geography. All Japanese, most Japanese Americans and most Japanese American organizations, be it a church, a temple, community center, everybody, those people who those places served and those places were all in the same neighborhood, but that's not true anymore. For the most part, those organizations are still in the same neighborhood, but the people who have traditionally belonged to those organizations and the people who those organizations have served have moved out of those areas, so there's now a disparity or a difference between where those organizations are located, but yet where those constituencies live. Centenary's a perfect example. Whether we would've stayed on Normandy and 35th Street or moved back down to Little Tokyo, the fact of the matter is the people who come to church would still be driving in on Sunday mornings from a radius of anywhere five to ten, in some cases, twenty or thirty miles away, okay? And that's true for almost every Japanese American church or temple, every organization that here in Southern California, which probably is, is the paradigm for most Japanese American communities anywhere, is that during the last generation, the younger families, i.e.Sanseis, have moved out of the traditional neighborhoods where we grew up and have moved into the suburbs or, or exurbs, I guess, as we call 'em nowadays, and have established residences there. But here's the thing, what keeps us viable is that, from what I see, most of the Japanese Americans who have moved out of the neighborhood, if I can use that phrase, still continue to see our churches and our temples and our community organizations as having some important place in their lives. It could be just from the standpoint of institutional memory, maybe brings back good memories of their childhood. It may be the place where they got baptized or it may be the organization where they belonged to the Boy Scout or the Girl Scout troops. It may be the VFW hall where their father or where their parents belonged to. But I think, or at least I'd like to think, that even though the Japanese American community, we're now a diaspora, we've scattered all over the place, still, those Japanese Americans continue to have some sense of importance or place a degree of importance on those organizations, institutions, churches, temples, etcetera, that still are by and large in the same neighborhoods where they once lived. Let me just say that, first of all.

However, going forward, it's clear to me that those relationships aren't going to keep Centenary as a church viable or alive, if I can use that term. And I think that's true for a lot of other organizations. We are in a position where we have both an obligation but as well a responsibility and most importantly, I think, an opportunity to expand the ministry of the church beyond its historic Japanese American constituency. But here's where I think I differ from some other folks who have this same idea: my view of things is that yes, as a church we need to be a church for all people. We always have been a church for all people; it's just that our emphasis, due to historical reasons, has always focused on the Japanese American community. But what has also changed, in addition to this church physically moving back down to Little Tokyo, where a lot of Japanese Americans don't live anymore, what has also changed, though, over the years, has been the definition of Japanese American, and it's, it's been a change in definition both for the people as well as for the organizations. I mean, I guess it goes by definition. If, if an individual's definition, or if a, if a demographic's definition of themselves change, then it must follow that definitions of the organizations that serve them are gonna change, too.

A very elementary example of what I mean, there was a time when the definition Japanese American meant one of a couple or two or three things. It meant that your parents were both Japanese American or that your grandparents came from Japan or that at least one of your parents was Japanese American and possibly the other parent was not. Nowadays those limited definitions just can't hold in and of themselves anymore because due to intermarriage, for one reason, the family has expanded and the definition of our identity has expanded as well. By the same token, the broader American culture has embraced things that traditionally were just things that interested only Japanese Americans and Japanese nationals. I guess the most relevant example, the most obvious example is sushi bars, okay, or maybe now as karaoke bars. I don't think people really fully understand that -- Japanese Americans don't understand -- that the larger American culture has absorbed Japanese culture and Japanese American culture so much that we now have an opportunity to use our Japanese American culture to communicate our faith maybe in ways that we never were able to beforehand. When people come to a Japanese American church, I think, I've been told this, quite frankly, by some folks that they come knowing, if not expecting they're gonna have Japanese food at the potluck or, or meet people who speak Japanese or, or hear Japanese language spoken, and they expect that and they like that. I mean, why else would they come to church here at a church like Centenary? Now, granted the majority language we speak day to day is English, but when I talk to non-Japanese Americans who tell me that, "I've learned about the internment and I've heard about, I have a friend who's father was in the 442nd," and then they show up to Centenary or another Japanese American church, well, that tells me that obviously there's a comfort level they feel about coming here and that there's a comfort level that this church imparts to them that makes them feel welcome and is not threatening to them.

The interesting thing to me is recently here at Centenary we have had Korean Americans, what's called, I guess, one point five or second generation Korean, Korean Americans attending worship here, and I mean, I think it's great, but I once asked one of them who was a young professional, an attorney, I asked him -- well, before I asked him the question I said, "You know, I, it's great having you hear and I'm glad you're hear, but I just got to ask you, with all the Korean churches there are here in L.A. of all places, why you coming to us?" And he said, "There's a certain comfort level that I feel here that I don't feel at a lot of other churches, including some Korean churches." He said, "You speak English here as a first language, and although I can survive in Korean, I'm much more comfortable day to day in English." He said, "You guys have great potlucks," which made me feel good. And so I think intuitively what he's communicating to me at least is, and given the historical relationships between Japan and Korea, aside from all that, or despite all that, there's a certain comfort level that the members here subconsciously or consciously give off that makes people know that they're welcome here. So I think our future here is a very bright one as long as we don't try to model our future on what we've done in the past, that going forward from here, we will have to broaden our outlook a little bit more, which I think is already happening anyway. Now, that doesn't mean rejecting our historic Japanese identity, Japanese American identity, because I think, again, that's partly what attracts people to us, but it's honoring that but at the same time not using that identity to limit who we are, who we reach out to and, and what we do.

I really think the Japanese American culture as become a universal culture. I mean, I joke that here in L.A., half the Korean, half the sushi chefs are Korean and the other half are Mexican. And I don't think that's too far from the truth, but just the fact that when a Korean American comes to Little Tokyo and opens up a business, he opens up a sushi shop, calls it a sushi shop and doesn't, instead of a Korean barbeque place or something like that, that tells me that we, we definitely are in a new time to when we can be proud of our Japanese American heritage, honor that, claim it, own it, and most importantly use it to continue communicating our faith, probably in ways that we never were able to before. Now, I do think also that here in the twenty-first century and particularly here in Los Angeles we do have several things going for us in the larger scheme of things that work in our favor, number one, because of cultural diversity now, we live in a time where it's fashionable to claim your ethnicity. Most Sanseis and Niseis grew up at a time when it wasn't a positive thing to say you're Japanese or Japanese American, but nowadays people, ethnic minorities and particularly recent immigrant groups are, are able to live in a climate where they can claim their ethnic heritage and their country of origin in ways that I never was able to when I was a kid growing up. Another thing I think we have going in our favor is that religiously, and spiritually, because of racial and ethnic diversity and plurality in America and again, particularly here in Los Angeles, the average person nowadays lives in a world where multiple faith traditions are reality, that it's no longer just being Catholic or Protestant, or Christian or non Christian. We live in an environment where the presence of so many different religions is just a fact of life. And again, for us as Japanese American Christians, again, that allows us to expand the pool a little bit because it opens the door for interreligious dialogue and it allows us to explore other parts of our Japanese heritage that we may have never felt comfortable doing before, and I'm speaking primarily of our Shinto and Buddhist spiritual groups. Somewhere down the family tree, every Japanese American has Buddhist and Shinto spiritual roots, and while, while surely Isseis and Niseis and to a large extent Sanseis were never free to explore those roots, let alone honor them or acknowledge them, I really believe that the diverse religious climate that we live in nowadays fosters that and gives us the opportunity to do so, and it's an exciting opportunity for us as well.

<End Segment 10> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.

<Begin Segment 11>

JG: Thank you. That was a very thoughtful and thought provoking answer about, about the future and about what you're dealing with now, 'cause it's, it's interesting, and I was just thinking as you were talking about the historical contingencies that gave rise to both Little Tokyo and to a church like Centenary. It was about having a space that could help initially immigrants adapt to the society in which they were living at a time when American society was very, not only just dubious of Asian immigrants generally, but, you know, virulently racist to Asian immigrants, and just having you map out that kind of, some of the changes that you've witnessed really gives some sense of how far the community has come and some of the challenges that lie ahead with regards to community organizations meeting a different set of historical contingencies. Now it's, you're talking about Japanese, recent Japanese immigrants, they're actually profiting from America's fascination with things like sushi or even just popular culture generally, manga, things like that, so that's very interesting. I just, I appreciated that answer. This is my last question. We could go on, but I'll show some restraint, at least I'll try to. And then if you have anything you'd like to add, we haven't covered, there are many, many things that would be interesting to talk to, including, I know you've been doing a lot of interfaith work, working with Muslim communities and that would be very interesting, but I'll save that for our next interview at some other point in the future. My last question to you is this: in light of what you've just told me, now, you recently, you, I wouldn't even just say are an amateurist or, you are a historian of these experiences of Japanese American churches. You recently authored a paper, "No Longer Strangers and Aliens," for your conference about the role these churches, Japanese American Methodist churches, have played historically, and I'm just wondering, kind of as a final, as a coda to what you've talked about in the course of our, these two interviews, what do you want people to know? If someone is looking at this a hundred years from now, what would you want someone to know about the role that Japanese American Methodist churches have played in the history of your community?

MN: I want them to know that our Japanese American churches play a very pivotal role in the development of our community and by extension in the development of our people. I would also want them to know that our churches are the points where Japanese American community started. Years ago, when I spoke with the late Yuji Ichioka, who wrote that very well-known book, The Issei: The World of the First Generation Japanese Immigrants, I asked him a very pointed question. I said, "You know, Yuji, I'm really surprised that the first two chapters of your book, you primarily talk about the role of the Fukuinkai, the Gospel Society, and the role of the early Japanese Christian, Issei Christians in America." And I said, "I'm really surprised because I don't know that you aren't Christian, but my sense is you may be Buddhist or Shinto or otherwise, but I was just shocked," I told Yuji, after the first few chapters, thinking that, wow, here's a scholar whose devoted the first two chapters of his prize winning book talking about the role of the churches, where most Asian American scholars, and especially Japanese American scholars, have really given short shrift to churches, at least in all the scholarly work I've seen. So I was curious, I asked Yuji why he devoted the first two chapters of his book primarily to the role of the churches and those Issei Christians, and his answer was very, very direct and to the point. He said, "Mark, because it's true. This is where the Issei community started. It was with the churches." And he said, "It doesn't matter what religion I might be. As a historian, this is what I've uncovered and this is what I've researched." And again, coming from a guy like Yuji Ichioka, that was very, very... well, I have to say very, very shocking, but very, very exciting for me to hear that, and really it was from that point on that my interest in Japanese American church history really did start to deepen and got me involved in doing the research and picking up all these materials over the years wherever I would find them. So my longwinded answer to your question is I want people years from now who might see this interview to know that our churches were places where the community started and our churches were places that brought people together, that sustained and strengthened people's lives, and were it not for our churches, the course of history, in spite of all of the struggles, all of the hardships we've endured and have gone through, for the most part I would say rather well, things might've turned out much more differently had it not been for the faith of those first generation, first generation Issei Christians, the work of those pastors, and then followed by the hard work of the Niseis who had to rebuild everything coming back from the camps. Things would've turned out, I think, much more differently and I think in many ways much more... not as well for us, had it not been for our churches and the people who faithfully supported them and carried on their mission.

JG: That's wonderful. Thank you. Is there anything that you would like to say or that we didn't talk about? I mean, we've talked about a fair bit, mind you. It's two interviews, but it's still, having known you as long as I have and appreciating your friendship, there are many aspects that we could, could have talked about. I'm just curious, is there anything else you would like to say in, kind of by way of concluding our interview today?

MN: I just want to thank you, Jim, and also to Densho for giving me this opportunity. Gosh, I never realized I had all this to say, and just thank you for this great opportunity. If nothing else, there, there are two types of people in this world, those who think before they talk and then those who think as they talk, and I think I'm probably in the latter camp. And I've really had an opportunity to clarify a lot of things that I've thought about over the years in talking with you and, and being able to respond to your questions, so thank you so much, and you know, this is really spurred me now to go on and do more research, maybe write another paper and, and do a few more things.

JG: That's great.

MN: So thank you so much.

JG: Thank you, Mark.

<End Segment 11> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.