<Begin Segment 31>

TI: So I want to move to your time at San Francisco State when you're a professor there. And it was a kind of an interesting time for, in general, Asian American Studies 'cause it sort of was being birthed in the Bay Area, and can you tell me a little bit about that time? I think, I'm not sure if S.I. Hayakawa was the president of San Francisco State at that time, but you also had Jim Hirabayashi. Can you talk a little bit about that time and your role during that time?

MY: Difficult where to start. There were five of us who were Japanese American males. There was what's her name in the nursing department, but she was not particularly active in the circle of Niseis. The five males were active and we organized the first mochitsuki in Japantown. I was teaching Japanese to, with a title, how to speak to your grandmother with a mixture of English and Japanese, so we were doing different, all kinds of things like this, organizing this and that activity in Nihonmachi. I was also active in the health fair for the elderly. I was very active in the hibakusha movement. So beyond the campus, I was active in Japantown for a number of reasons. I was also involved in ACLU with their surveys, such as discrimination in the hospital situation, if any, kind of thing. So I was doing all kinds of activities, which I found no reaction by the non Japanese towards me that would say I'm being discriminated. I was just treated like another member of their family or number of the staff. And it was within this circle that the five of us were involved in, outside the campus. Now, when the campus, student activity started kind of emerging, and it kind of emerged to the point of a strike, what should we do? I was involved only as an individual, faculty, not even as a faculty member I was, became involved, although a number of my students were reacting to the situation. I remember one student said, "Mr. Yamanaka, I won't be coming to class anymore." I said fine, no problem. "I'm going to Canada, to avoid the military." Another person with pretty much the same reason said, "I'm going to Sweden." Other people said, "Mr. Yamanaka, are we gonna continue class the same way?" And I said, "What do you guys want to do?" And out of this they opted, well, they weren't sure what to do. I said, "I'll give you a couple of alternatives. We could just dismiss the whole damn class and that's no big deal for you or me under the circumstance, or I could arrange for us to meet as a class elsewhere. The elsewhere will depend on you." And so for a while we met at the students' home in, what's that housing unit next to campus? That was too small a unit, so I arranged to meet us at the church on Nineteenth Avenue, and then finally with the American Friends Service Committee on Lake Street, and that's where we became permanent until that whole situation blew over. And so my class had continued to go, and therefore I was able to give them a grade for the class, whereas part of my colleagues would just dismiss the class, couldn't, their students lost out. My point was I'm not gonna go on a strike where my students lose out, so I was able to help my students out during this situation.

Also during the strike, what can I do? Personally, I saw the students being beaten up by the cops and I felt that's just not right. Something should be done, but should and could is something else. What could I do? I don't know. So I said, well, tomorrow I'm gonna go between the students and the cops. There was a group of us faculty, about twenty-five of us, who wanted to do something. And then John and I from the sociology department decided we'll go between the students and the cops wherever they were meeting, confrontation was about to happen, and this is always, there's a prelude to anything like this. It's always between ten to two. It's always somehow the groups get together, the confrontation group. And so the day before, like a good Japanese, I took a bath, put on new underwear, put on new shirt -- I was not gonna be caught at the hospital with a dirty underwear -- and then on top of that I put on a suit and I put padding in my shoulder. I put a hat with padding in my hat just in case I get beaten up. So I was all ready to go to the hospital, beaten up, so whenever there was, appeared to be confrontation between the cops and the students -- and you know, it was the students raising hell usually, so it was fairly easy to spot, to be aware of this -- so I would go in there and try to calm the students down, which I was able to do fairly easily. And that went on until one o'clock to one thirty, and then everything calms down by one thirty, and the students go home, the cops are not doing anything except around the perimeter, and I felt my job was too, so I wanted to go to my office, which is in the psychology building. Well, there was a cordon of police around the place where I wanted, my, where my office was located. It was very interesting, as I was walking this way and the cordon of police was this way, the police opened up a rank and said I may go through. As I went through the police, the police said, "Thank you, Professor," some of whom were there when I was trying to stop the students from getting into, more excited, so that kind of made my day. So that was the kind of role I was involved. I was not involved in any direct role with Hayakawa at that point, nor was I there when Hayakawa was putting out the cables and the loudspeaker in the truck on Nineteenth Avenue. That was just another group of, I stayed on campus where the rioting was. So out of that kind of situation, the student movement resulted in ethnic studies, various ethnic groups wanting classes finally came about, and the Japanese Studies came about, and in time I created the course called Concentration Camp USA and taught that for --

TI: And how did that go about, that terminology? Because even today terminology is debated back and forth. It's controversial sometimes to use the term "concentration camp." You used this decades ago.

MY: I used it with apologies to my Jewish students. I said the word "concentration camp" I'm using has no bearing on the Jews in Germany. They were annihilation camps. They were out to get rid of all the Jews. The Japanese had another concentration camp in Southeast Asia, toward all the British, the other groups, including Americans, missionaries and such, they had a very harsh social, cultural experience there. Primarily it's because this was the Japanese way of dealing things. To them it was no big deal that they didn't have much food because they themselves didn't have much food. So I tried to explain the use of the word concentration camp and how I was using it. For us it was just a holding facility, and with food provided, clothing provided, just to be held until when god knows what kind of a thing. So that was the basic premise on which I used the word "concentration camp," in terms of the definition, who, why, and chronological sequence of the camp.

<End Segment 31> - Copyright © 2011 Densho. All Rights Reserved.