<Begin Segment 20>

TI: Yeah, so earlier you talked about how you would call Nihonmachi kind of this sleepy town, nothing was going on, so what was your thoughts? What was your vision for San Jose Japantown?

RH: Well, so after that first year in college, and so 1970, I went, actually went back home for the summer and then before I went back home, I was hearing about some friends who, from, some people I knew from early church days and stuff, that were interested in trying to organize these outings for the seniors, for the Issei and they were calling different people together to help see if, during the summertime, whether or not we'd be willing to participate to help do these field trips for the seniors. And so, and this was happening on the East Bay side in Oakland and some of the people involved were coming from UC Berkeley, from the campus, and some were just from the community and different churches and stuff, so that's, when I heard about this and I decided, well, I'm gonna be back in the Oakland area, so I wanted to jump into that and see what was going on and started going to the planning meetings for that. It first formed as a group called East Bay Sansei, so it was predominantly Sansei doing this, and we started looking at just doing some kind of recreational stuff for the seniors and then, but people in San Francisco were starting to organize similarly, so that was, like, pre Kimochi basically, so they were trying to do this similar thing, so we start expanding in different ways. And so for that summer we were, we were just doing a lot of work just trying to see how we could organize and do different things and starting to look at what was happening within the Issei population, and kind of spurred my interest in all that. That organization changed, it kind of evolved later to a group called East Bay Japanese for Action and then later changed to Japanese American Service... something.

Tom Izu: JASEB?

RH: JASEB, yeah. And so, so that was the beginning of what, I guess, is JASEB now, is that group of people that I started with in 1970.

TI: And this was another time where you, oh, what's the right... crossed paths with PJ?

RH: Right, because she had gotten involved with that same group on the East Bay side, through people, 'cause she had started to get involved with what was going on at Cal State Hayward through some of their Asian American studies, organizing there, and so they were being called on to also join in on this activity during the summer, or during the year. So, and then my oldest brother, who had come back home, actually, after being in the military and stuff, Steve, he had heard about this, too, so he started getting involved with it, too, so the two of us were both pretty heavily involved with it.

TI: Now, did he see combat in Vietnam? What kind of experience did he have at Vietnam?

RH: He was pretty fortunate. He was not on the frontline, he was, so he was, he was more in, I guess, the backend stuff. So there were occasions where, naturally, was kind of dangerous for him, but he was pretty safe most of the time he was there.

TI: Did he have any difficulties being an Asian American fighting in Vietnam, any stories about that for him?

RH: A few, yeah. I mean, he would talk about where he would hear stories about guys who were out in the field where they were being shot from behind, basically by their own guys basically. So there was some of that stories going around, yeah.

TI: Okay.

<End Segment 20> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.